Articles – Butterflies and Wheelshttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org
Discussing all the thingsMon, 19 Mar 2018 00:21:58 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.14Nigeria: Three Children Tortured for Witchcraft in Cross River Statehttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2018/nigeria-three-children-tortured-for-witchcraft-in-cross-river-state/
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2018/nigeria-three-children-tortured-for-witchcraft-in-cross-river-state/#respondSat, 17 Feb 2018 01:17:14 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=103428]]>A local non-governmental organization, the Basic Rights Counsel Initiative (BRCI), in Calabar has just released horrific images of three children who were tortured for witchcraft in Cross River State in Southern Nigeria. Grace 3, Lillian 5, and Juliet 13 narrowly escaped death after their accusers tried to extract confessions from them.

According to local sources, the parents of Grace, Lillian and Juliet are dead. So the three children have until recently been living with their grandmother. The grandmother has been ill for some time. She has AIDS and accused the children of being responsible for the ailment. She claimed that the children were sucking her blood at night, and that made her emaciate. The grandmother contracted two witch-finders in the community to help in neutralizing the witchcraft in the children.

On February 12, the grandmother lit some fire and the witch-finders burnt the knife until it was very hot. They place the knife on the bodies of the children, and they screamed uncontrollably. Grace, Lillian and Juliet sustained serious injuries in the process. A member of the community who volunteers for the BRCI heard about the incident and contacted the organization. The BRCI intervened and has taken custody of the three children. The police have also intervened. They arrested the grandmother of the children but granted her bail on health grounds. The two witch-finders are currently at large.

Belief in child witches is widespread in this region and children who are accused are sometimes tortured and killed. Churches and pastors in this part of Nigeria preach and promote the idea that children can be witches. They often organize sessions where they claim to exorcise the spirit of witchcraft. State institutions have been slow in tackling witch-finding churches because many state actors believe that witchcraft is real. Also state institutions do not want to be seen to be anti-Christianity and anti-God. An effective public enlightenment campaign is needed in the region to educate the people, to reason them out of this dark and destructive superstition, and save the lives of innocent children.

]]>http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2018/nigeria-three-children-tortured-for-witchcraft-in-cross-river-state/feed/0Witch Killing in Nigeria: Why We Must Stop the Ukpabios and Liberty Gospel Churchhttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/witch-killing-in-nigeria-why-we-must-stop-the-ukpabios-and-liberty-gospel-church/
Wed, 13 Sep 2017 18:50:16 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=101415]]>I want to tell you why you should oppose the recent move by the Ukpabios to bring their witch-hunting mission to Lagos, Nigeria. Before doing that, please take a look at a recent report in one of the Nigerian dallies, the Punch. This newspaper reported the murder of a 70-year-old woman, Mrs Lyiatu Michael, in Doka community in Bauchi state. Mrs Michael met her untimely death after being accused of witchcraft. She was one of the two women who were seized by a local mob following suspicion of occult harm. Angry youths accused the women of causing premature deaths and lack of progress in their community. They took the two women to a house where they beat and tortured them to confess details of their occult activities. Mrs Michael died in the course of the beating but the other woman survived and is receiving treatment at a local hospital. Cases of torture and killing of persons who are accused of witchcraft are widespread in Nigeria. Many of these cases take place in remote communities and are largely unreported.

Witchcraft accusations in Nigeria have been linked to the activities of churches and pastors. Unfortunately these churches have continued to promote their witch finding activities despite the negative impact on the local population. One of such churches is the notorious Liberty Gospel Church. Helen Ukpabio, a self-acclaimed ex-witch, owns the church. Ukpabio just posted this message on her face book page:

I will be in Lagos on a five day crusade: Deliverance From Difficult Witchcraft Attacks. Witchcraft remains one of the major avenues through which the devil attacks and oppresses unbelievers and believers in the world today. This has led to oppression, joblessness, hardship, untimely death, failed marriages in families, unfruitfulness etc.

God wants to deliver a lot of people from the yoke of bondage and I will teach expository teachings that will lead to deliverance. Ministering also would be Pastor Mfonido Ukpabio.

Clearly Helen Ukpabio has recruited her son into the business of witchcraft exorcism. She is passing on the baton of witch finding. Well, it is difficult to comprehend that the Ukpabios are going ahead with this vicious program despite the obvious damaging effects.

According to the post, this program is taking place in Lagos in South West Nigeria where the Liberty Gospel Church has established a new branch at 22a Adewumin Abudu Avenue Off Osolo Way, Isolo Ajao Estate, Lagos. Apparently, the Liberty Gospel Church is extending its witch-hunting mission to Lagos. We must not allow that! Actually, the headquarters of the Liberty Gospel Church is in Calabar in Cross River State. The activities of this church have been linked to rampant child witchcraft accusations in the region. Are we going to allow these tragic incidents to happen in Lagos?

As the case of Mrs Michael has revealed, Nigerians attack and kill witches because they believe witchcraft is real. So they attribute causal agency and responsibility for their misfortunes to occult forces. Nigerians blame the witches for death, illness, accidents, poverty, infertility and lack of progress. Meanwhile these associations and attributions are unfounded. Witchcraft is imaginary and has no basis in reason, science or in reality.

However, messages such as the one that Ukpabio posted make many Nigerians believe that witchcraft is a valid explanation for their misfortunes. It is not. The poster for events further spells out what constitutes witchcraft attacks. It asks: “Are you suffering from witchcraft attacks, obstacles and difficulties, failures or frustrations, joblessness with disappointment, confused life and unproductivity, untimely death miscarriages and bareness?”

As you can see, Ukpabio and her Liberty Gospel Church continue to recharge and reinforce witchcraft narratives in furtherance of their evangelical business. They emphasize the link between “joblessness, hardship, untimely death, failed marriages in families” and impotency and witchcraft. Meanwhile such causal links and connections do not exist. They are imaginary!

All critically minded people should try and resist the Ukpabios before it is too late. All people of conscience should mobilize and ensure that they do not extend their witch-hunting mission to Lagos.

We should not wait until lynch mobs start burning alleged witches on the streets of Lagos before confronting the Ukpabios. We should not wait until old women in Lagos start suffering the same fate as Mrs Michael, or children who are accused of being witches are beaten, tortured and killed, as has been the case in places such as Cross River and Akwa Ibom states, before taking action. Witch persecution, killing and beating will not stop in Nigeria until evangelical throwbacks such the Ukpabios and their team of witch identifiers, exorcists and ‘doctors’ are stopped.

]]>iDoubt: Critical Thinking and Active Humanism in Africa in an Internet Agehttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/idoubt-critical-thinking-and-active-humanism-in-africa-in-an-internet-age/
Mon, 10 Jul 2017 00:52:43 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=100514]]>The need for critical thinking in Africa cannot be overemphasized because it is in this region that some of the dark and destructive effects of dogma, superstition, and blind faith are most manifest.The inability to question claims and beliefs is at the root of religious bloodletting, witch killing, and ritual murders that plague the region. Unfortunately, the spread of education, science and human rights has not succeeded in reorienting the people’s mindset. Pastors, medicine men, godmen and women continue to propagate bogus claims and prey on popular fears, ignorance and credulity. In Kenya; Prophet Owuor has reportedly resurrected a woman from the dead, while a traditional priest in Ghana sustained serious injuries while testing a magic bulletproof. In South Africa, pastors asked church members to eat grass, and drink Dettol. They used toxic insecticide to fake and faith heal the people. A certain pastor Bushiri claimed to have walked on the air.

In Nigeria, there have been reports of witches crash landing in a church or at a bus stop and then turning into a cat or bird. These issues are worrying and have made critical thinking urgent and compelling in Africa and among Africans. This presentation explains a very important device for critical thinking. This tool contains programs that one can utilize in nourishing the mind and in sifting through the welter of information that one receives every day. I call this device, iDoubt.The ‘I’ stands for different applications: individual doubt, inspire doubt, inculcate doubt, inform doubt, and internet doubt. I argue that these applications could enhance one’s curiosity and critical abilities, and help us guard against deception, exploitation and foolery.

Individual doubt: The program, Individual doubt, underscores the capacity of all persons, young and old, black or what, educated or non-educated, religious or non-religious to query and dispute notions and beliefs. Humans are doubting beings. We are questing, questioning, inquisitive and curious animals. Questioning a claim is part of human chemistry. In fact, critical thinking is in the human DNA. Too often the human mind burns and bubbles with questions. Unfortunately, these impulses get suppressed. The thoughts are brushed aside. Things we see on the streets or on the television or on the internet; things we hear from family members or friends; what we read in the papers or presentations such as this, trigger questions. They provoke thoughts and ideas because they seem not to be as true or as real as imagined, expected or stated. People are constantly grappling with the notion of appearance versus reality, truth versus falsehood. They try to reconcile what people say and what they mean. Accounts of what happened in the past or in the present even what people say would happen in the future elicit objections and reservations.

Very often we have questions regarding the actors behind certain events and experiences, the persons involved in a robbery, kidnapping, accidents or murder; the roles they played, the time and place of events. The mind is curious to understand these characters or is unsatisfied with it is presented. Hence doubting attests to the mind’s thirst to know and to understand. It is the driver of human curiosity and ingenuity. The mind poses and composes questions in order to ascertain, clarify, verify or to obtain more information. For instance, some people have questions regarding the holy books. They ask: who wrote the Bible? Did Allah really dictate the Quran? Can a spirit talk? The mind boils with questions regarding ritual beliefs and traditions: Can a human head turn into money? Can a human being turn into a snake? Can human beings ‘fly’ at night as witches? Why at night? Why can’t they fly during the day?

This application draws attention to the fact that although human beings believe and have faith, they also exercise doubt. It is important to note that human beings do not doubt exactly the same way. Human beings relate differently to issues. Things affect us in ways that we question with varying degrees of passion, nuance, and emphasis. So doubts have personal connections content and intent. Our questions reflect personal experiences, frustrations and expectations. Our doubts are unique just as we are. But these sentiments may be dormant and not overtly expressed. So we need another facility to awaken and put these critical ideas into active use, another application that inspires doubt.

Inspire Doubt: This application stresses the importance of motivating people to question. Although doubting is natural to us, we may not doubt at the end of the day. The art of questioning can be stimulated; it could be directly or indirectly provoked. Information which one reads could make the person curious and to begin to ask questions. Questions also provoke questions.

For instance many years ago, in 1994, I applied to teach in a school in Ibadan that is in South West Nigeria. The headmaster of the school had, after going through my application, which contained my date of birth, asked me: Is that your real age? Actually, he meant to ask: Is that your real date of birth? I was confused and taken completely aback by the question. I stared at him for a while and then replied: which one is real age? The man suspected that the question did not go down well with me and then said with a smile: “Well I am just asking.”

This experience haunted me for a while because, until I encountered this man, I never knew that a person could declare an unreal age or date of birth. I did not know what, in Nigeria, they call ‘official age’. It seemed impossible and unthinkable because I have younger brothers. If I had quoted an age less than my actual age that would mean I am the same age with my younger brother! Meanwhile, my mother never had twins!

As you can see, questions provoke questions. Doubts trigger doubts. This encounter made me doubtful of people’s age. Since then, whenever a person tells me his or her age or the date of birth, this question comes to my mind: Is that the real age? Is that the real date of birth? From there other questions follow: Is that the real certificate? Is that the real name? Is that the real grade? Is that the real nationality? Is that the real father or mother? Is that the real child? Nowadays, in dealing with people I devote a lot of time doing a reality check.

People may have doubts about a thing or a project; about a person’s age, qualification or credential. One may have questions regarding changing one’s job, accepting a friendship or marriage proposal, relocating to another country, starting a new business, joining a group, contributing to a cause etc. However, the person may be reluctant to express his/her doubts. Sometimes it is necessary to nudge people to ask questions and to disclose their suspicions. This program stresses the need to incentivize critical thinking and inquiry.It invites us to motivate persons: children, siblings, parents or peers, friends, coworkers, family or community members to openly and expressly voice out their objections and dissent.

This application urges us to reward and not penalize critical reasoning. Those who doubt and question beliefs should be commended and celebrated. Skeptics should be honored. There should be prizes for those who ask the highest number of questions in an event like this. Some reward should be set aside for persons who pose tough questions after presentations. However, as Bertrand Russell said, some people would rather die than think. Some people would rather die than express their doubts. That is why the next application is a very important part of this device.

Inculcate doubt: This application is closely related to inspiring doubt. The only difference is that it reminds us that questioning aptitude can be taught. Although it is part of human nature to question, doubting is something that can be instilled into others. Critical thinking is a learned process. The skills can be transmitted. Questioning claims and behaviours is not an attribute that just readily manifests on its own. Sometimes, the habit has to be nurtured and cultivated because human beings could decide not to examine or interrogate certain issues and claims.

So this application invites us to teach people to doubt and to instruct others to think critically. We can instruct people to challenge claims, examine traditional, cultural and religious beliefs. Critical aptitude should be introduced as a subject in primary and secondary schools. People should be able to learn from a young age how to question and to doubt.

We need to teach pupils to ask questions such as: How do you know? What is the evidence? Are you sure? Why should I believe you? Can you prove it? Just as people are taught to greet, drive, run, cook, play football and tennis, they should also be taught to questions ideas, and critically examine claims and beliefs. Even when people are thought to doubt they may still refuse to express their thoughts. That is why we need the next application in the kit.

Inform doubt: This application emphasizes the need to inform others about our doubts. It urges us to publicize our critical thoughts, and disseminate our misgivings. Simply put, tell others you have doubts. Tell a friend: “I doubt it”. Doubts lurk and rage in our minds longing for expression. They could dissipate and fizzle out from there. Without telling someone about them; without communicating these objections and reservations, no one would know. A key benefit of a doubt is lost. The power and value of critical thinking lie in its public expression and application. No one will reckon with those critical thoughts or ideas unless they are made known. Without communicating such thoughts, the ideas will not be taken into account. First of all the benefit is lost to the entertainer of a doubt because nonexpression of doubts has choking and suffocating effects.Expression of doubt is cathartic and leads to mental relief and ventilation.

In addition, informing others about our doubts nourish other persons’ doubting capacity. Critical ideas shared are critical ideas gained. Human beings are producers as well as consumers of doubts. Expressed critical thinking is an exercise in mutual intellectual nourishment.

Sometimes, the tendency is to think that one is doubting alone. Too often I have heard humanist, atheist or skeptics heave a sigh of relief that they are not the only ones who doubt certain notions and beliefs. First timers at skeptics/humanist meetings often say: “Oh I thought I was the only one thinking this way”. They make this remark after hearing others share their doubts and disbelief, and say openly and publicly what they have been thinking and expressing privately. This application enjoins us to announce it to the world that we doubt, to wear the label of critical thinking, skepticism and rationalism with pride. This is because doubting is one of the human’s most valuable asset. It is a mark that human beings do not just accept whatever is said. That human beings consume with some taste.

So please, tell it to anybody who cares to know that you doubt it. Even if people who do not care to know, say it to them, they may start caring from that moment. You may be surprised to hear their response such as: “I doubt it too”. “I don’t believe it too”. “I have been suspecting that guy”. “I also think that prophet is a fraud. This whole notion of an afterlife? Shhh, it has never made sense to me etc. Some of my Christian friends have told me during conversations that they do not believe in the existence of Hell or in the Devil. One said to me that he did not believe that Bible was the word of God.

Very often one may never get to hear such doubt filled declarations if one refuses to communicate one’s critical ideas. In fact, one may not get to meet other doubtfuls like some of you out there unless one shares openly and publicly one’s skeptical thoughts. So don’t keep those doubts to yourself, announce them, publicize them, tell a friend, and say to a neighbor: “I doubt it”.

Internet Doubt: In the business of communication today, one important facility is the internet. This application urges us to use the online accessories to express and communicate our doubts. These accessories include websites, facebook, twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, snap chat, podcast, and blogs. Before the advent of the internet, the space to express one’s critical thoughts was limited. Many people who doubted hardly put their thoughts into writing.

Even when these thoughts are written, they may not be published. Few critical thinkers who published their ideas did so in obscure journals, magazines or bulletins which few knew about or read. With the advent of the internet, this situation has changed. Information technology has liberated doubts and doubters. It has provided an additional space to express skeptical ideas.

To let you know how the internet could really be vital in expressing our doubts, let us take a look at the reaction to an article that I published online, on Ghanaweb, some time ago. After a stampede in Mecca that led to the death of some of the pilgrims, I queried why those pilgrims should suffer death if Allah really existed. I have no doubt that you agree with me that this query is in order. The article titled, “Hajj Stampede: Where was Allah?” did not go down well with many readers and generated 177 comments. In one of the comments captioned, ‘Think Deep’, the writer said:

“Writer no name is sad. I don’t know how and where to start or what to say. But my question to the writer is if you say Muslims believe Allah is omnipotent, omnipresent etc what about the God you believe in? And if your God also has any of those qualities where was he when tragedies like this happen? Just think. Think deep and you will know how seriously and wastefully you wasted your time in writing this piece.” As you can see my piece which was a question has generated more questions. But this article would not have generated these questions to my knowledge if I had not posted it online. So the internet has been useful for skeptics and believers alike in disseminating their doubts and disbelief.

Furthermore, try and visit any of the online forums and see how Nigerians, Ghanaians and Kenyans are waxing with doubts and critical ideas. Someone who was worried about the rise of atheism in Nigeria posted this comment on Naira land:

“I was just reading a post on Naira land some minutes ago where the topic was on what constitutes a God-fearing individual. Someone commented adding that he/she is (sic) an atheist and that got me wondering. I have been seeing so many atheists on social media in Nigeria and it bothers me why there are so many of them nowadays. Are people now saying that there is no God? Do people mean that they don’t believe in the creator of the universe? How did they come into existence if they don’t believe in God? God created us all and this is what the Bible says. What is it with all these atheists? I want to understand why anyone would come to the conclusion that there is no God. It baffles me seriously. I need answers”.

So the internet is providing a platform for believers and non-believers to pose questions and express their doubts, shocks and surprises. It has become a tool for all those who are baffled by atheism or theism to look for answers. So I say: Use it; make use of the internet. Digitalize your doubts!

Conclusion: I have explained the iDoubt device and the various applications that we can use to nourish our minds. Doubting is a mark of an intelligent and active mind. Bertrand Russell has amply noted that the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are filled with doubts. Questioning illumines, awakens and enlightens. Critical thinking has the potential of saving life, money and time. It could help diminish the harm, suffering and exploitation that many people experience across the region. Critical reasoning is human beings’ greatest weapon against authoritarianism, tyranny and fraud. It is necessary for active humanism and a worthwhile life because critical examination of claims is revealing and unveiling. By questioning beliefs, we free the mind from the chain of dogma. We unveil what is hidden from the other: what parents hide from the children, infants from adults, leaders from the led, teachers from students, clergy from lay people, men from women, and women from men.

At the same time, doubting disrupts knowledge and truth claims. Questioning unsettles and unnerves especially those who lay claim to absolute truth or to an unshiftable paradigm of knowledge. Doubting faults what is believed to be true or right; things as we see them and as we perceive them or things as we want them to be seen or perceived. Doubts are the harbingers of the new, of new knowledge, clues, insights and discoveries. Critical inquiry is a marker of creative, inventive and innovative minds. Doubting is an invaluable asset that is needed in sifting through the maze of information, the confusing and contradictory claims and beliefs that we encounter daily.

At a time that we are witnessing rampant and irresponsible claims of people resurrecting from the dead and turning into birds, goats and snakes. In an era when pastors are walking in the air and many Africans still believe that human beings fly at night as witches and that one can make money through ritual and human sacrifice, this device, iDoubt, is a resource.

IDoubt and the different applications can be put to effective use in tackling the demon and witch hunters and in furthering the cause of active humanism and critical thinking in Africa in this internet age. So next time you encounter those peddlers of dubious superstitious, religious and paranormal beliefs, whether online or offline, let them know in no uncertain terms that: I doubt it; you doubt it; we doubt it!

]]>Mythologized Cowboy as Anti-Immigrant Narrativehttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/mythologized-cowboy-as-anti-immigrant-narrative/
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/mythologized-cowboy-as-anti-immigrant-narrative/#commentsSat, 22 Apr 2017 23:02:27 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=99362]]>The Cowboy, along with the Llanero, Caballero, Vaquero/ Vaqueiros, Gaucho, Paniolos, Huasos and Drover, in the animals that they tended produced a large quantity of calories and vital nutrients per unit of labor/worker, even though it was very low per unit of land. In film and literature, one is so bound up in the mystique of the Cowboy that one rarely notices that they were producing a critical nutrient and calorie input that facilitated a significant transformation in the urban industrial complex from the 1870s on into the 20th century. As with the American Cowboy, the Vaquero, Gaucho and Drover were mythologized while their more mundane but more vital role as producers of food, was somewhat ignored.

From their own ballads and legends a literature of the gaucho – la literatura gauchesca – grew and became an important part of the Argentine cultural tradition. Beginning in the mid-19th century, after the heyday of the gauchos, Argentine writers celebrated them. [Martin Fierro (1872) by José Hernández of Argentina]

The rural rebel, be it the hard-working Cowboy, the ruthless bandit, or the messianic cult leader, has been mythologized in many cultures, from those living in industrializing cities as they acquired amenities unavailable, to mythologized heroes. See, for example, the Brazilian epic by Euclides da Cunha, Os Sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands).

Richard Slatta points out that

this legacy of the cowboys has not been unimportant, however. In Argentina and Uruguay, for example, the once maligned gaucho was rehabilitated by the elite as a symbolic weapon against the perceived threat from urban immigrant masses. And in the United States, rodeos, Wild West shows, novels, toys, advertising, films, and television have transformed public perception of the cowboy from an uncouth rowdy to a national hero, so that identification with the cowboy helped Ronald Reagan become one of America’s most popular chief executives. [Cowboys of the Americas by Richard W. Slatta]

Anthropologists, particularly those who followed in the tradition of Emile Durkheim, recognized that myths and legends serve a social purpose and who propagates them largely determines who benefits from the belief system. The iconic Cowboy arose in the late 19th century in the U.S. with the huge influx of migrants from Southern (including both sets of my grandparents) and Eastern Europe including Russia. In order to eulogize the Cowboy as the icon of the real America, one had the herculean task of putting the entire history of the Cowboy (Vaquero) in a gigantic Orwellian memory hole along with all the other immigrant contributions to the U.S.

The legends of the Cowboys have not been dormant, being kept alive by films and other media. However, they have taken on new life with the rise of the virulent anti-immigrant ideas that have entered into mainstream American political culture. These immigrants from South of the border, it is claimed, are bringing hard drugs, crime and other forms of violence to our land. To the racists, they threaten not only our cultural purity but our racial purity.

The iconic Cowboy, not the real one, is being used to demonize immigrants in order to support policies that harm them and in the process, harm the country.

In addition to not recognizing what has come to us from abroad, we too often ready to blame others for the not so good things that may in fact be our responsibility.

THE U.S. IS BRINGING DRUGS AND CRIME TO MEXICO

REPEAT – THE U.S. IS BRINGING DRUGS AND CRIME TO MEXICO and not the Reverse – yes, you read it correctly!

Nearly two years ago, President Donald Trump opened his presidential campaign with his assertions about Mexicans – They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re bad hombres.

To Trump’s assertion that they’re bringing drugs, nobody has seemed to ask the question: to whom are they bringing them? Too often ignored is the fact that a line of white powder and a straw has become the paraphernalia for the recreational drug of elite groups who can afford it, including many who live in expensive dwellings such as Trump Tower.

I was involved in the Caribbean in the 1990s when water transportation involving speedboats and even specially built submarines was the route of choice for drugs from Colombia via small Caribbean islands to be smuggled to the Florida coast. Some of these islands were devastated by the relatively large amounts of cash to be used for bribery and the deaths that often resulted. It was fair to say at the time that the drug problems in the U.S. – the demand for drugs – created the drug problem in the Caribbean and not the reverse.

It was the Cali cartels that drove the illegal drug trade through the Caribbean. With the demise of the Cali Cartels but the survival of hard drug production areas in Columbia and further South along with the continued demand in the U.S. for them, a new land route had to be found for these drugs. Even so, the drug trade, including transit to Europe, remains a problem in the Caribbean.

It is a fundamental axiom to most economists that if something can be produced and/or is already being produced then a way will be found to get it those who are willing and able to pay all the costs – legal or otherwise, peaceful or otherwise. Mexico’s great sin was to have the long border with the U.S. as the only land route for smuggling became dominant. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase:

Pobre de México, tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos: Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States.

In the abstract, virtually all economists would agree that the blame for illegal substances is shared by those who produce it, those who traffic in it and those who buy it. All the while those who happen to occupy the areas where it is transited are the real victims. But without buyers at the end of the stream, the flow doesn’t happen. In our politicized political climate, the politics of a particular situation might alter or at least modify the belief of some economists that demand drives activities such as the drug trade.

Following the logic of the argument that I have presented, Mexico is the victim of our drug habits, and they have paid an enormous price for it. Estimates for the death toll over the last decade vary, with some so large I hesitate to repeat them, since I cannot verify them. Even without numbers, we can all agree that the death toll from the drug trade has been horrendous. The sizeable amounts of money involved make it possible for the gangs to acquire an array of lethal weapons.

Though most of the deaths are gang members – or so it is claimed – the loss of life by law enforcement officers and innocent civilians is significant and has become a national tragedy. The sums of money involved make it inevitable that there will sources of corruption. The concentration of resources fighting the drug trade has strained the law enforcement resources, making crime and violence in other sectors more difficult to control. And how does one even begin to measure the impact that this senseless violence has on the everyday life of Mexico’s citizens?

Mexico has not only paid a heavy price, they have cooperated completely with the U.S. to try to stamp it out. The continuing and escalating attacks against them and insults to their dignity are totally unwarranted. If relations between our two countries break down and the co-operation on the drug trade ends, our border problems in the U.S will be multiplied many times over and no wall would keep them out.

As far as I can learn, Mexico historically did not have a major hard drug problem. I stand ready to be corrected on this point. Whenever drugs pass through an area, it is inevitable that some of the drugs are peddled in the transit areas. I have no data on this, but I would be surprised if Mexico does not now have a hard drug problem in its own country.

If our language and songs have any validity, Mexico does have a history of growing and using marijuana as we do, especially where there are now increasing states where it has become legal.

While cocaine may be the drug of choice for Trump’s more affluent supporters, another hard drug addiction is devastating rural America (and parts of Urban America) in the very areas where Trump scored some of his largest majorities. “Today, the United States, which contains 5 percent of the world’s population, uses 80 percent of the world’s painkillers,” says Paul Offitt. This addiction does not come from Mexico but from your family Doctor (and an occasional illegal dealer including Doctors) in the form of a prescription for Opioid pain killers manufactured by leading pharmaceutical companies. Much of the cause of this wave of addiction is attributed to the despair over deteriorating economic conditions while others prosper. Trump got the votes of the despairing rural poor by promising to respond to their grievances and restore their lost jobs and economic status. His policies and current Budget proposal will almost certainly worsen their condition in spite of his promises to the contrary. He may be attempting to build a Wall to keep Mexicans and Central Americans out but he is definitely building a Wall to keep the less fortunate of his fellow citizens in their poverty. In the process, he will be polluting their water and air, lessening their educational opportunities, taking away their health insurance while giving tax cuts to those who do not need it. By some perversion of the language, this is being called Populism.

]]>http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/mythologized-cowboy-as-anti-immigrant-narrative/feed/1The Immigrants Who Fed Us and Made 20th Century America Possiblehttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/the-immigrants-who-fed-us-and-made-20th-century-america-possible/
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/the-immigrants-who-fed-us-and-made-20th-century-america-possible/#commentsThu, 20 Apr 2017 18:20:07 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=99324]]>The Cowboy, along with the Llanero, Caballero, Vaquero/ Vaqueiros, Gaucho, Paniolos, Huasos and Drovers produced in the animals that they tended a large quantity of calories and vital nutrients per unit of labor/worker, even though it was a very low per unit of land. In film and literature, one is so bound up in the mystique of the Cowboy that one rarely notices that they were producing a critical nutrient and calorie input that facilitated a significant transformation in the urban industrial complex from the 1870s on into the 20th century. As with the American Cowboy, the Vaquero, Gaucho and Drover were mythologized, while their more mundane but more vital role as producers of food was somewhat ignored.

In a previous article – Cowboy – An English speaking Vaquero? – Hiding in Plain Sight! – I argued that everything aspect of Cowboy paraphernalia (except the six-shooter) came from immigrants, and except for the Levis, all came to the U.S. from south of the border. I traced the lineage of many of the items back through Mexico to Spain and in some cases to the Arab/Muslim cultures and even back to Buddhist Mongolia. One important element I did not dwell on was the fact that there was no tradition either from Spain (or the rest of Europe or Africa) of managing cattle from horseback, which was necessary on the vast open range. In fact for Spain and the rest of Europe, riding horses was for the elite and for the military and not for those who tended cattle. In the New World, Spain banned “natives” from riding horses. Yet this capability was necessary for managing cattle on the open range, so a way was found via the Missions and cattle ranchers to allow an exception to be made for herding cattle.

Other than the basics of horsemanship, the natives and later mestizos had to create the technology for managing cattle on horseback. This is absolutely critical to emphasize since this inventiveness comes from a section of the population which, to this day, conventional wisdom and popular culture assumes has nothing to give but their labor and a continuing supply of labor through procreation (Proletariat – “From French prolétariat, from Latin proletarius [“a man whose only wealth is his offspring, or whose sole service to the state is as father”], from proles [“offspring, posterity”]”). They had to learn to capture and break wild horses. They originally used only blankets, but in time built their own saddles with the horn and eventually the dally (dally from the Spanish dar la vuelta, to take a turn) which was wrapped around saddle horn for the leverage for roping cattle. They needed chaps to protect their legs when going into the chaparral (Spanish chaparreras, or chaparro) to retrieve a calf. The stirrups had to be transformed because there were different needs from their use by the military. They had a knife at the end of a long pole which they used to cripple cattle when they were harvested only for their hide. They became so proficient that the Spanish colonial authorities had to ban their use (with a major fine for violation) for fear that they would rid the plains of all cattle. They substituted a loop of rope at the end of the pole and eventually created the lasso or lariat (la reata) and the skills necessary to use them. They created the rodeo (Spanish – rodear– to surround or go around) to display their skills. We could go with a plethora of details but it is simply important at a time of anti- immigrant debate to correct the myth that the so-called unskilled have nothing to contribute but cheap labor. It is at our peril and theirs that we ignore the critical contribution that they made to “our American way of life.” It is an indicator of what they can continue to contribute. Humanitarian arguments should be sufficient to admit them and give them new opportunities, but some applied practical augments can also be helpful.

This vast amount of nutrient on the hoof is of little value unless it can be transported from the low population density countries or areas where is produced to the cities and countries where it is needed. For Argentina, Australia and New Zealand, it was refrigerated ships that could get their beef and mutton to the European market. For the U.S., it was first the railroads and later also trucks, and for exports it was also ships.

Unlike the hard-working Cowboys who brought the cattle to the railroads, those who built those railroads were either ignored or demonized. Their stories were “often omitted from the triumphant narrative of progress.” The “suffering and survival of the workers who were treated as outsiders” was an untold story until recently. Ryan Dearinger examines the moving frontiers of canal and railroad construction workers in the tumultuous years of American expansion, from the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, to the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in 1869. He tells the story of the immigrants and Americans—the Irish, Chinese, Mormons, and native-born citizens—whose labor created the West’s infrastructure and turned the nation’s dreams of a continental empire into a reality. Dearinger’s fine book follows in the tradition of Common Labor: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals, 1780-1860.

The large open ranges of the American West meant that herding cattle had to be done on horseback. Such large open ranges were absent east of the Mississippi and in the overseas sources from whence they came, the cattle herding horse culture had to be learned by those who went west to settle or just to be cowboys.

With the development of the railroad and industrial production, the horses became ever more important, pulling trolleys or wagon loads of beer or other goods, or for pulling the large-scale complex farm machinery that industry created, opening up large acreages to cultivation. These evolved into large specially-bred, powerful horse that did not have the agility needed for herding cattle on the open range.

The large-scale complex farm machinery that industry created allowed for large scale industrial agriculture in the Northern Plains. Like the Cowboy herding cattle (see below), we have agriculture producing not particularly high yields per unit of land but because of the machinery, it produced high yields per unit of labor. It was a marvelously reciprocal relationship with Industry providing better technology and agriculture providing more food to feel the Industrial cities. It is a dynamic relationship along with improved yields from plant breeding, synthetic fertilizer and pesticides which continues to the present. The railroads took the wheat to places like Minneapolis where it was milled (and after 1880s) packaged and sent off to make bread and other products. Prior to this time, Americans preferred maize to wheat because of its greater reliability. See Rachel Laudan’s wonderful essays Mutable Maize and The Mutability of Maize.

The large scale (industrial) production of wheat in the northern plains of the U.S. play a complimentary role to that of the Vaquero/Cowboy in changing diet and feeding the rapidly growing industrial cities. The U.S. went from pork to beef as the leading source of meat (and much more recently to industrially produced chicken) and from maize to wheat as the predominant grain. Pigs were often raised in the cities or nearby and were not as land intensive to raise as beef cattle. This mode of pork production would not have been able to keep up with the growth of the industrial cities as reformers were seeking to remove pigs from the cities for sanitation and other reasons – see for example Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City by Catherine McNeur. Similar transformation in meat (including mutton as well as beef) and wheat production as increasing amounts of food were being produced for a growing urban population in industrializing cities in Europe, North America and to a lesser degree elsewhere. For the growing international trade in beef, mutton and wheat, refrigerated ships played the role that railroads played in the U.S.

We have seen the role that immigrant culture played in producing beef for the industrial cities of the U.S. It was Mennonite immigrants from the Ukraine (then part of Russia – the Mennonites were originally from Prussia) that brought the Turkey Red wheat that transformed the northern plains of the U.S. It was hardy and could be planted in Fall and harvested in Spring. The hard soils required the steel plough to work the land and steel rollers to mill. The “invention in 1873 of a steam engine that could grind wheat in such a way to produce fine white flour” facilitated the large scale production flour (along with the revolution in packaging occurring at the same time) which was shipped to cities to be baked into wheat bread which became a staple of the urban worker’s diet.

Later as large scale vegetable (and fruit) production became feasible in California to be shipped East to the Industrial areas of the country, it was the Chinese immigrant laborers who built the railroads from the West Coast, also were the ones who drained the marches, built the levees (dykes), dug the canals that drained the marches of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and later the Central Valley hat transformed California in a great agricultural state. The Chinese Exclusion Act came along as the Chinese laborers were being replaced by power equipment in the 1880s.

From 1880 onward in Europe and North America, there was a sustained increase in life expectancy passing forty years for the first time in most Industrial areas. That improve nutrition played an important part is evidenced by the fact that there was also as sustained increase in average height from generation to generation.

The large-scale complex farm machinery that industry created allowed for large scale industrial agriculture in the Northern Plains. Like the Cowboy herding cattle (see below), we have agriculture producing not particularly high yields per unit of land but because of the machinery, it produced high yields per unit of labor. It was a marvelously reciprocal relationship with Industry providing better technology and agriculture providing more food to feel the Industrial cities. It is a dynamic relationship along with improved yields from plant breeding, synthetic fertilizer and pesticides which continues to the present.

In summation, we can argue the scientific/industrial revolution in Europe was built upon a foundation of knowledge and technology that came from Asia and the Arab world. The rapid growth in population in the Industrializing cities of Europe required the increasing yields from potatoes and maize that came from the “New World” to feed them. The increasing yields mined the soils so Europe and the U.S. had to import nitrates from Peru and guano from islands that they claimed. The latter was unsustainable until replaced by synthetic fertilizer in the 1900s. In other words, we are all products of a continuous process of what we obtain from elsewhere from trade or other contacts or what immigrants bring us. What counts is how we refashion it, carry it forward and make it our own. We need to recognize the full richness of the process that got us to where we are now and the necessity of sustaining the openness in its many facets which is necessary to keep it alive and vital.

]]>http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/the-immigrants-who-fed-us-and-made-20th-century-america-possible/feed/2Cowboy – an English speaking Vaquero? – Hiding in Plain Sight!http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/co-cowboy-an-english-speaking-vaquero-hiding-in-plain-sight/
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/co-cowboy-an-english-speaking-vaquero-hiding-in-plain-sight/#commentsThu, 20 Apr 2017 00:58:15 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=99319]]>There is no more iconic American figure than the Cowboy. The generic English language terms when combined have lost their original meanings as boys possibly herding or milking a cow. Most anywhere in the world, the term cowboy refers to that ironically American (U.S.A. American) figure.

One does not have to go that far to the right to find a vision of the real America being rural white English-speaking Americans. No group fits this image better than the romanticized iconic American cowboy of novels and films – not only in the U.S. but elsewhere in the world. The typical cowboy is a white English-speaking male. If in cowboy films there is any religion, it would be a nondenominational Protestant church in a Western small town.

This image spans the spectrum of U.S. politics. On the right, two brothers lead a group to take over a National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, essentially asserting that they are more real American than the constitutionally established elected national government. They of course dress like cowboys to assert their claim visually. Though they may have been raised on a ranch in Nevada, one of them manages a valet car fleet in a Phoenix, Arizona suburb and the other is listed as owning a construction company in Utah and having frequent problems with the local government.

This romanticized image of the cowboy has its counterpart on the left of the political spectrum. The anarchist/naturalist Edward Abbey (who immediately preceded me as chairman of the Philosophy Club at the University of New Mexico) in his marvelous novel The Brave Cowboy: An Old Tale in a New Time portrays the mid -20th century cowboy whose libertarian lifestyle cannot survive the restraints of the modern world. It was made into a superb movie – Lonely Are the Brave (1962) produced by and starring Kirk Douglas. The screenplay for the film was written by Dalton Trumbo who had been “blacklisted and jailed after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.”

As would be expected, the iconic cowboy has become part of the debate over immigration and efforts to restrict it. Frederic Remington and Charles Russell are considered to be the two greatest artists of cowboys and the American West that they inhabited. In an evening TV news story showing President Trump signing one of his decrees on immigration, one of Frederic Remington’s famous bronze sculptures, Bronco Buster, was visible on the President’s desk.

Similarly, Daniel Pipes, in a rant defending President Trump’s policy of restricting immigration from six predominantly Muslim Middle Eastern countries, uses the image of Charles Russell’s Smoking Them Out.

It is interesting to note that Remington’s 1889 visit to Mexico is rarely mentioned in accounts of his life or merely mentioned in passing as if it were of little significance. Yet he wrote extensively on it and the Mexican Vaqueros whom he studied. His drawing Mexican Vaqueros Breaking a ‘Bonc’ appears to be the model for his bronze Bucking Bronco (or Bucking Broncho as it was originally spelled). In other words, the Bucking Bronco statue on the President’s desk (replications of which can often be found around the world) may actually been a Vaquero and not a Cowboy?

A BBC News story on 23 February 2017 opens with an image – “In the middle of a packed arena a cowboy clings on to a wildly bucking bronco” in which every everything seen in that image except the rider himself (and of course the pants he was wearing) originally came to the U.S. across what is now the border where a wall is to be built. When posted online the rider on a bucking bronco is not shown, though the accompanying text has the above quote. No mention either that the very word Rodeo comes from Spanish as does the Rodeo itself. It does open with a man standing in front of a Burrito (little burro) sign voicing support for the deportations underway and of course, the wall.

The hats they wore would have come from Mexico and were decedent from hats worn by the (Buddhist) Mongols. J.B. Stetson took “sombreros” East, made some changes, and sold them around the world, including the American West, as Stetsons. The settlers coming from the East wore Derbies. The cattle in the picture would have been descended from those brought North with the settlers, got loose, and went wild, and which were much later crossed with Herefords which were brought from the East. Everything else in the pictures and statues, from the hat to the boots to the saddle and the horses, came to the American West via Mexico.

In 1598 when Don Juan de Oñate y Salazar crossed the river at El Paso Del Norte and followed the Rio Grande northward, he had settlers, horses and cattle. For the Vaqueros who drove the 7000 head of cattle, one could claim that they were among the first Cowboys in what was to become the United States. From Santa Fe (La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asísi) which he founded in 1609, the settlers spread out over what is now Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. In 1680 when the Pueblo Indians rose up and drove the settlers out, many of the cattle and horses became feral and began stocking the region with Mustangs and Longhorns. The Spaniards successfully and brutally returned in 1692.

Many of the settlers were Conversos – recently converted Jews. In the last few decades, it has been increasingly understood that many of these Conversos in fact retained their Jewish religious practices in their home and in many cases, may have secretly retained their Jewish faith. Recently some in the region have reclaimed their Jewish faith. All this has opened up a new area of scholarly inquiry with Ph.D. dissertations, books and articles. This means that the Cowboy heritage not only includes the Catholicism of the Spaniards but the Judaism of the Conversos. Given the antisemitism of many of the real America proponents, it would be a supremely delicious irony if the first Cowboys in what is now the U.S. were Jews.

That was 1598. The emergence of the iconic Cowboy after the Civil War is another story. We are just recently beginning to learn of the ex-slave slaves and other Black Cowboys. If there were significant numbers of Jewish Cowboys, it is a story yet to be told. In our era of celebrating multi-culturalism, I expect and look forward to future research finding more ethnic, racial, religious and other diversity than we now recognize. Whether Jewish Cowboys are found is as yet unknown but we can still celebrate them as the first American (north of what is now the U.S. Southern Border) Cowboys.

The horses that the Spaniards brought to the New World were brought to them by the Moors (Arabs and Berbers) who were Muslim. Given that the horse was absolutely essential for herding cattle on an open range, one could argue that, fully understood, the Arab Muslim contribution to the Cowboy culture was more important than anything that came from East across the Mississippi River.

In New Mexico where I spent my formative years through the completion of my Master’s Degree in Economics, the Hispano population claim to be the originators of the Mexican-American cuisine and that Tex-Mex, for example, is merely a derivative of what they created. I have never been able to find a decent sopapilla (also spelled sopaipilla or sopaipa) outside of this region.

As Rachel Laudan has cogently demonstrated, much of what we consider to be the Mexican (and following from that New Mexican) cuisine is an adaptation of cuisine that was brought to Spain by the Moors. This cuisine has roots that extend all the way back to Persia, and passes through the Middle East and North Africa. Immigration from some of the countries that now occupy this region may be “temporarily” banned but the product of their culinary arts is welcomed throughout the Southwest United States. From Hurriyet:

These cooking traditions were carried to Mexico by the first Spanish conquistadors, followed later by many Middle Eastern immigrants after the break of the Ottoman Empire. The latter is more responsible with el Pastor being a popular street food in Mexico, just like the Döner Kebab in Turkey, Souvlaki in Greece or Shawarma (from Turkish çevirme-to rotate) in Syria or Lebanon.

The famous Fart Scene in Mel Books’ Blazing Saddles begins by showing a plate of beans. These beans were either the common bean – Phaseolus vulgaris (which originated in South America and is now grown on every continent except Antarctica —or the Tepary bean – Phaseolus acutifolius – which along with maize and squash formed the fabled Three Sisters of Mexican (aka Aztec) and North American agricultural row sequencing and rotation. One or the other beans probably became one of the crops of the settlers. In Spain, they are called judias o frijoles blancos. Whatever flatulence came from the East, it was not from either of these nutritious beans.

Increasingly, after 1868, the Tabasco Sauce that the Cowboys put on their beans would have been produced on Avery Island in Louisiana; the Tabasco peppers (Capsicum frutescens var. tabasco) from which they were then and are now made originally came from the Mexican state of Tabasco. The McIlhenny Company claims to have formulated the sauce in 1868.

In trying to understand the diverse cultural, racial and ethnic origins of the cowboy, one must not forget the important role that ex-slaves played after the Civil War. Estimates of the number Black Cowboys are as high as 5,000 or about one in four. In one video documentary, the claim is made that cowboy was originally a derogatory term directed towards Blacks who herded cows. No evidence was offered so we will have to leave that nugget as a very interesting hypothesis. Among the many sources on the Black Cowboy are the following:

My Real America is a nation of immigrants that takes what is brought to it and makes it their own be it 100% from one group or a bringing together of traits from different groups. As such, the Cowboy can be seen as 100% American because we in America have made it our own. My Real America recognizes the various heritages that have allowed us to shape our country including the Vaquero heritage that created the modern Cowboy. Recent research is adding new diversity to our Cowboy heritage. In my Real America, the richness of the human endeavor allows us to violate (this one time only) basic arithmetic and allow someone to be 100% American and still have another heritage or even multiple other heritages. These multiple heritages enrich our culture and give it added strength and resilience. It is a dynamic interaction that doesn’t end with the initial appropriation but continues in a culture continuing to be receptive to new ideas. It definitely does not demonize or demean and seek to cut us off from those who brought us such a precious heritage as the Cowboy. One of the great strengths of our multiple heritages is that immigrant groups have continued to evolve their cultural contribution where it frequently flows back to the originating homeland and to the world. A view of the Cowboy as being uniquely an American creation falsifies it and denies its rich heritage. Walling ourselves off from any part of our rich, diverse heritage implies that we as a nation do not have the capacity to separate out that which is beneficial and that which is not. It provides only the delusion of strength but in the long term it cuts us off from the ongoing transformation that is necessary for success in our ever changing 21st century.

“In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 1933

]]>http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/co-cowboy-an-english-speaking-vaquero-hiding-in-plain-sight/feed/4Anti-Bullet Charms and Destructive Power of Superstition in Africahttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/anti-bullet-charms-and-destructive-power-of-superstition-in-africa/
Wed, 29 Mar 2017 23:04:30 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=99026]]>The recent case of a traditional priest in Ghana who was fatally wounded in the process of testing his supposed anti-bullet charms has once again illustrated the dangers of superstitious beliefs in Africa. This incident has amply shown the imperative of skeptical thinking and scientific outlook in the region, and the fact that a dearth of critical temper could damage and shorten the lives of people. Nana Tolofasito, the traditional priest, claimed to have spiritual powers and went ahead to test these powers. He asked somebody to shoot him with a gun in order to demonstrate the efficacy of his anti-bullet medicine. He sustained serious injuries from the gunshot because his so-called medicine could not protect him. Fortunately, the bullet only pierced through the upper part of the left arm and left a gaping hole. This indicated that there was no shred of anti-bullet power in his charm. The supposed medicine could not stop, counter or reduce the ravaging impact of the bullet.

The graphic photo of Nana Tolofasito receiving treatment while some blood was gushing out of his body at a clinic in Ghana should serve as a lesson in the wages of superstition. It should be a gruesome reminder of the destructive power of such irrational and paranormal claims. But the question is: Will this incident ever persuade people across Africa, both the educated and the non-educated alike, to give up believing in anti-bullet charms? Will it stop people in Ghana and in other West African countries from taking seriously this absurd and dangerous claim that some charm could neutralize gun shots? I do not think so. And this is the reason why I said that.

This is not the first time that the process of testing anti-bullet medicine has led to tragic results. Sadly many of these cases of death or injuries go largely unreported. This is not the first time that a test had shown the claim of an ‘African’ bullet proof to be baseless. In Nigeria, there have been several of such instances where traditional medicine men or some potential buyers and actual users of anti bullets charms have died in the process of testing the ‘medicine’.

Still, the belief in ‘African’ bullet proof remains pervasive and people continue to use and market anti-bullet charms. These charms come in various forms and shapes. They could be in the form of a ring that a person can put on the finger or in the pocket or on the waist. The anti-bullet medicine could be in form of liquid which people would drink or rub on their bodies.

However, there is no shred of evidence at all that any of these formations of ‘African bullet proof’ is effective.

That notwithstanding, traditional priests such as Nana Tolofasito continue to risk their lives to demonstrate the purported efficacy of these charms. Anti-bullet medicine remains a silent killer of Africans.

What is most worrisome is that some African intellectuals continue to promote and defend claims of African anti-bullets charms. They argue that these charms are demonstrations of ‘African science’ despite several tragic cases where these claims had been proven to be demonstrably false.

The unfortunate thing is that, even when anti-bullet charms are shown to be evidently false, some people remain adamant and unconvinced. They still hold on to their belief. These people rather argue that in this case Nana Tolofasito did not use the genuine or potent brand of the charm. This pattern of thinking sustains the irrational belief trend and makes it difficult to eradicate superstition.

So there is an urgent need to promote critical evaluation of paranormal claims in Africa. Efforts are needed to dispel this erroneous impression that African science stands for superstition and irrationalism. In fact this idea of African science exoticizes Africa because it makes it seem as if the term, science, means something different to Africans and therefore should be abandoned. The standards of science in Africa, what is regarded as science or scientific in Africa, should not be different from what applies in other parts of the world.

A process of enlightenment is required to dissuade other Africans from endangering their lives or the lives of others by producing or agreeing to test and market anti-bullet charms. The claim of anti-bullet charms and amulets has no basis in reason, science or in reality.

]]>Violently Ideating About Punching Nazishttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/violently-ideating-about-punching-nazis/
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/violently-ideating-about-punching-nazis/#commentsThu, 02 Feb 2017 19:33:52 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=98236]]>Disclaimer: If “Nazi” can be considered shorthand for actual “fascist”, then I’ve punched a Nazi. More than once. More than one Nazi, actually.

This sounds like braggadocio and I’m not sure how to convey it any better, but the reality of it all is, like a lot of violence, actually rather pathetic. A couple of years after some of the horrible incidents mentioned in my last anonymous guest post, during which I was probably dealing with undiagnosed PTSD, the brother of an acquaintance decided that I needed to take responsibility in protecting white women – namely my mother – from being raped by black men.

In practice, this supposedly meant that I needed to accept Nazi Bro as my sensei. (I leave it to you to ponder the irony of a man vehemently opposed to Asian immigration wanting to be anyone’s sensei).

I wasn’t keen on the idea, one thing lead to another, which led to punching. In as far as anyone can win these kinds of things, he got the upper hand and my kidneys took a few blows. Nobody went to hospital.

He’s not the only fascist I’ve had a dust-up with since, even though I don’t try looking for trouble. Nowadays Nazi Bro can be found featuring on footage published by a couple of anti-fascist YouTube accounts, although I’ll not link to them in order to maintain my own anonymity. While I haven’t seen or heard from the guy in over 18 years, there still aren’t all that many degrees of separation between us.

Twee

Another disclaimer: On some level I’m fond of the Blue Monday remix of Richard Spencer being sucker punched; I don’t like Nazis and I do like New Order. It’s a matter of akrasia though; it’s not helping anything worthwhile at all for me to like it, and enjoying violence, or normalizing the enjoyment of violence, risks enabling the crossing of lines.

I hope this doesn’t come across as overly-confected principle. That’s not my intent. My set of principles is pretty minimal, actually.

There is of course a cloying line of appeasement that’s been doing the rounds that says you should never punch a Nazi. This is patently ridiculous and tantamount to the kind of twee, Hitler-appeasing rubbish you’d find in the lead-up to, and even during, World War II. (It doesn’t help that we now also have John Lennon memes in the mix).

There are situations when not using force against fascism will just end in one kind of catastrophe or another. If you were to find yourself in a context genuinely equivalent to Nazi Germany, it’d possibly be better to forgo the ethics of punching Nazis, and to start considering the logistics of hiding Gestapo bodies.

And if they came for your family… well, it sounds asinine even just to suggest that people are allowed to defend themselves. Of course they are.

There are two points I’d like to suggest before moving on; abstaining from hitting a Nazi can be the right thing to do, but such restraint is not universally desirable, and possibly, it’s worth distinguishing between “force” and “violence”, because not all force entails violation.

All the ideating

People want to feel some degree of solidarity, even in the best of times, and globally speaking we’re not in the best of times. Some of us just don’t realize it yet.

But I have to wonder what the hell some people think solidarity is. Apparently it’s a suitable hashtag to accompany pictures of Maajid Nawaz, posing for the camera all on his lonesome, despite solidarity apparently having something to do with a plurality of people.

At other times, there’s a crowd, but without any clear indication of what unites it – an atomized, neo-liberal mass. Folks slap “solidarity” on that too.

“What do we want? Like… good stuff, and affirmation of being good. When do we want it? We’ll get back to you on that, but likely now, only we’re yet to draw up a program!”

Last year I had a dilettante from one of the more performative of local socialist cults, aggressively try to convince me that the attempted hijacking of an anti-racism protest by said cult, was an act of solidarity with anti-racists. (Said cult is notorious for its hijacking attempts in other progressive circles too – marriage equality campaigns, you name it).

So what’s up with a lot of the violent emoting about Richard Spencer’s head being punched, and what’s it got to do with solidarity?

A lot of what I’m seeing from where I am, which is not to say all of what I’m seeing, is arch-patriarchal, or unthinkingly tribal, or pure fantasy, dressed up as solidarity of one form or another; a lot of people not knowing why they support it, or how it relates to what they stand for, or even what they stand for to begin with. This meaning, that if you have any qualms, even just qualifications to add to nominal support for Nazi punching, then you can be declared not a part of the team. Even if you have actually punched a Nazi, and nobody on the “team” has.

Rank tribalism isn’t solidarity, at least, not in the left-wing sense of the term. It can’t be. If it could, then racism could qualify as left wing, which is something not even worth considering. Sexism could be left wing – brocialism and socialism ridiculously being one and the same. Base group celebration of the use of force, rather than a measured sanctioning of it in certain contexts for certain ends, is just another rank tribalism.

It’s been the thrust of a number of recent critiques – Nick Cohen’s What’s Left? for example – that the left has forgotten what it stands for. It shouldn’t surprise anyone then, if there’s any truth to the notion that the left has a crisis of values, when rank tribalism is the best attempt folks can come up with when attempting, or affecting, “solidarity”. Rank tribalism around the issue of punching Nazis presents itself as just a recent example.

It also bears repeating that “fascist” and “Nazi” and other political demarcations of far-rightism aren’t just terms that have been thrown around too loosely over the years, but are also terms that are amenable to being thrown around. Just ask Orwell’s neck.

Take the urge to make punching Nazis a categorical, universal good, for reasons undefined, and couple it with the ability to be equivocal about who is and is not a Nazi, or fascist, or sympathizer, and you basically have a recipe for “punch whoever the fuck I want”. Consider the use of that rubric in the hands of folks who are hungry for violence, or fantasy, or power, or who are just too damn confused about what they want to defy groupthink.

I’ve already seen people soft-policing others’ opinions on Facebook comments threads, congratulating folks for arriving at the correct prescriptions, not only without regard for their reasoning, but with the implication that any further reasoning would be suspect. While people, especially those with a public platform, can be expected to support the arguments they publish, they aren’t obliged to become certified by the next random person off of social media.

The implication, especially when force is on the menu, isn’t too opaque.

I’ve seen an anti-racist activist, along with their cohort, go full on in the support of disinhibited violence against vaguely defined “fascists”, coupled with a none-too-un-aggressive ideation directed at anyone failing to agree. If this doesn’t raise an eyebrow, consider that this anti-racist activist, who on top of also being a person employed in a role tangential to helping vulnerable single mothers, is equivocal, confused and entirely – but also unwittingly – flip-floppy about trans-activist aspirations to open women’s shelters to trans-women.

Imagine escaping out of an abusive domestic situation only to wind up in or adjacent to that particular mix of threat and ambiguity.

A little clarity

In all of this, the only clarifying agents I can suggest are a few crucial questions. What do you hope to achieve in a given situation by punching a Nazi or Nazi-like figure? How do the likely outcomes gel with your values? What are your values and aims, exactly, and why should we find them compelling?

This last question will probably be the most vexing, but answers tantamount to “something something revolution” shouldn’t be able to pass muster, especially not in the context of left-wing politics. Not because all force is verboten, but because sanctimony can license abhorrence, and because on a practical level, when things get this vague, it’s often not clear when a purported leftist is left, nor a purported fascist, fascist.

If more people could learn to spot violent pantomime for what it is, as distinct from serious campaigning or consideration of the use of force, that’d be great. Punching-on against fascists may be necessary at times, but the purpose isn’t fun, and in my experience, certainly hasn’t been – I’d caution folks to be wary of people who treat it all like an adventure or a football match.

]]>http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/violently-ideating-about-punching-nazis/feed/1Gender Equality and Misogynistic Islam in Nigeriahttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/gender-equality-and-misogynistic-islam-in-nigeria/
Mon, 16 Jan 2017 01:13:57 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=97935]]>The Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar (lll) has made it clear that hatred, inequity, injustice and discrimination against women define the Islamic establishment, which he represents in Nigeria. This was evident in his reaction to the gender equality bill that is currently going through the legislative process at the Senate.

For some time now, there has been a debate on the status of women in Islam or under sharia law in Nigeria. There have been conflicting views and opinions on the issue. This debate, often provoked by issues regarding family inheritance and marriage in muslim majority states, has led to confused notions as to whether men and women are equal in Islam or if Muslim men are more equal than women under sharia.

However, the Sultan of Sokoto seemed to have sealed this debate. He has actually resolved the controversy. The Sultan of Sokoto has made it clear that it was against the religion of Islam to treat men and women equally.

Otherwise, how else would one interpret the outrageous remarks of this head of Muslims in Nigeria on the gender equality bill and his stiff opposition to its enactment as law?

First of all, let us take a look at the provisions under this bill. The bill seeks equal inheritance for men and women. That means female children will not be discriminated against in sharing family property or wealth. It also ensures a widow’s custody of the children unless such a measure conflicts with the interest and well being of the children.

The bill further provides that a widow can choose to remarry or live at the home of the late husband and is entitled to a ‘fair share’ of the late husband’s property.

Now, what is wrong with these provisions that any enlightened practitioner of religion, nay Islam, should oppose them?

The Sultan in his reaction stated that the bill was against Islamic religion and that Muslims would not accept it. But if I may ask, what actually is against Islam in this bill? Is it equal inheritance for women? Is he saying that what is in agreement with Islam is inequality and discrimination against female folks? Is that what the Sultan of Sokoto said that Muslims should accept?

Now Musims, will you accept that? The Sultan further stated that Islam was “our total way of life” and that they would not accept a change of what Allah had permitted them to do. Really? Look, no one disputes the fact that Islam informs the way Sultan Abubakar (III) and other Muslims live. But when he said that nobody should alter what Allah had decreed, what did he mean?

Did he mean that Allah permitted the discrimination against women and girl children in Islam? Can a spirit determine what human beings do? Except for self-styled spokespersons such as the Sultan, has Allah the capacity to dictate or decree how women and girls should be treated or what they should inherit?

The Sultan of Sokoto should stop using the name of Allah to sanction gender inequity and injustice. He should desist from employing the idiom of Allah to legitimize his misogynistic viewpoints and then use such oppressive Islamic formation to undermine a bill that would empower women, and guarantee liberty and justice for all.

I mean, Mr Sultan, why are you afraid of gender equality? What do you stand to lose if women and men are treated equally in all areas of human endeavour? How does discrimination against women dignify you and your Islam?

In addition, the Sultan went further to identify his hateful, discriminatory and anti woman Islam as a ‘peaceful religion’. Peaceful religion?

Now Mr. Sultan, do you really understand what a peaceful religion is? Look, justice is a pre-requisite for peace and your misogynistic Islam cannot bring or ensure peace among muslims because it is a form of war against women and against universal human rights. Your version of Islam is ideologically compatible with that of the Boko Haram. In fact your position on women rights as shown in your reactions to the gender equality bill is extreme and does worse harm and violence to the dignity and well being of women and girl children. I therefore urge all progressively minded muslims an non muslims alike to speak out against Sultan Abubakar’s misogynistic Islam, his opposition to equal inheritance for men and women, and to rally support for a bill that ensures gender equity and justice for all in Nigeria.

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. …. He is not here.’ Mark 16.6f.

Whether or not National Geographic has found where they “really” laid the body of Jesus is a hot and controversial topic right now. But right or wrong, it is certain that he keeps popping up.

First the good news for believers: Diggers (let’s not call them archaeologists) working within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem have discovered what they claim is the tomb of Jesus. Again. It seems like only yesterday (2008) everyone was talking about a bone box (or ossuary) reported to be the limestone burial case of Jesus, from Talpiot outside Jerusalem. After about a year of discussion, the discovery was forgotten as yet another ploy by publicity hungry director, James Cameron, and an accomplice, Simcha Jacobovici to mislead the media–in this case, CNN, which produced a lavish docu-mystery culminating in an unveiling of the box–and resulting in a letter of repudiation by 50 leading biblical archaeologists, including the estimable Oxford historian Geza Vermes: who said that the arguments for the Talpiot tomb discovery are “not just unconvincing but insignificant.”

Since then, the “discovery” has been derided at a symposium at Duke University as a hoax unleashed on a credulous public by an unscrupulous alliance of hucksters and scholar accomplices.

After a respectable period of mourning for the death of this piece of nonsense, which I eulogized in these very pages at the time, we find ourselves once again at the door of the tomb. But not a tomb two-odd miles away from the old tomb—back at the door, or rather the top, of the old tomb.

For the first time in centuries, scientists have exposed (uncovered) the original surface of what is traditionally considered the tomb of Jesus Christ. Located in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, the tomb was often raided, compromised and even destroyed in 1009 by Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who ordered the church levelled. The damage left few original parts remaining.

The tomb has been covered by marble cladding since at least 1555 CE. Frederik Hievert, National Geographic’s resident archaeologist and promotionalist in Israel writes, “The marble covering of the tomb has been pulled back, and we were surprised by the amount of fill material beneath it. It will be a long scientific analysis, but we will finally be able to see the original rock surface on which, according to tradition, the body of Christ was laid.”

Cautious readers will note that Dr Hiebert folds a number of assumptions into his headline, the most outrageous of which is that he’s digging in the right place for the right guy using the right information. That does not prevent him from showing more than average enthusiasm for what he thinks he’s found: “I’m absolutely amazed. My knees are shaking a little bit because I wasn’t expecting this…We can’t say 100 percent, but it appears to be visible proof that the location of the tomb has not shifted through time, something that scientists and historians have wondered for decades.”

While Dr Hiebert regains control of his knees, it might be worth pointing out that the place where he stands is probably no more than a cemetery annexe where scores of tombs were loaded with the bones of dead Jews during the occupation of Jerusalem that began with the end of Hasmonean rule and the beginning of Roman direct-control of the province between 63BCE and 35BCE. Crucifixion was a Roman, or more precisely, Hellenistic, practice, which was used extensively in the region even before the Romans took control. One especially grisly description from about 75BCE, when the Maccabeans were in charge, gives us this concerning king Alexander Jannaeus: “As he was feasting with his concubines, in the sight of all the city, he ordered about eight hundred [rebels] to be crucified; and while they were living, he ordered the throats of their children and wives to be cut before their eyes.” (Josephus, Antiquities 13.14.2) Crucifixion as a form of judicial terrorism, and the mass burial of the victims, is not in doubt.

What is in doubt is where. The site of Golgotha is only known by legend. The church associated with the crucifixion and “deposit” of Jesus’ body, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (where the digging is happening) was created at a time when legend-making was at its absolute peak in early imperial Christianity, and Jerusalem was a warehouse for memorabilia. To make matters worse, the site of “Calvary” (the hill atop which Jesus was supposedly crucified, aka Golgotha or place of the skull) is not attested in Latin sources from the period. And both the sites of the crucifixion and of the burial are enclosed within the precinct of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, based on a pious geographical sense that one must have been close to the other. The first mention of Golgotha outside the gospels comes from an early third century work by Tertullian against the heretic Marcion (Against Marcion, 2).

The information that provides the NatGeo team with their treasure map comes from the Gospels, all four of which tell basically the same short story with minor but important variations. No geographical detail whatever is provided. The overlaps do not signal concurrence or agreement from independent witnesses but the fact that they were all copied from a single source; two of four got their story from the writer of the gospel of Mark who was, as far as most scholars can reckon, the first one to tell the tale of Jesus’ burial. It goes like this:

Mark 15.46: [Pilate] gave the body to Joseph [of Arimathea]. 46 So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

Matthew 27.59f.: 59 Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, 60 and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away.

Luke 52ff: Going to Pilate, [Joseph] asked for Jesus’ body. 53 Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. 54 It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.

A fourth writer, named John by tradition, has a little more to say and adds a character named Nicodemus to the scenario:

John 19.39ff: Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. 40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. 41 At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. 42 Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

Unfortunately what John reports is in direct conflict with Mark’s later comments, that the body had not been anointed and that this omission is what brought women to the tomb on the morning of the third day, when they found the tomb empty (the Holy Sepulchre Church contains chapels for each of these details, including one called the Anastasis, where Jesus is thought to have stood when he was raised from the dead, and a slab called the “stone of anointing” where the anointing of the body was supposed to have taken place). Some of the details are accurate enough: aromatic spices were used to lessen the stench of deciduous flesh but also had a religious and ritual significance by Jesus’ day. But the horror of anointing bodies days after death would have prevented any effort to correct a ritual omission. Mark’s story is based on the idea that during the Sabbath, anointing would have been forbidden, asur; John’s on the horror of suggesting that a body not being anointed according to custom made it impure, tamei. The two tales are irreconcilable and originate in a contest of taboos. Both cannot be right, inviting the conclusion that no one knew anything about what process had been followed, much less had any idea about where the events happened.

As for the location of the tomb. National Geographic in its press release gushes that “the accounts consistently describe how Christ [sic] was buried in a rock-cut tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy Jewish follower of Jesus….Jewish tradition forbade burial within the walls of a city, and the Gospels specify that Jesus was buried outside of Jerusalem, near the site of his crucifixion on Golgotha (“the place of skulls”).” But that is a bit like saying that it is certain that some apple orchards in the Midwest were planted by Johnny Appleseed and others by other farmers. Since no one knows where Golgotha was (and it cannot be deduced from the location of the Church), it seems moot to discuss whether the tomb itself was inside or outside the revamped walls of Jerusalem during the time of Jesus. Some early Christian writers and Josephus seem to imply a shift in the city walls. But they do not say that the shift had anything to do with accommodating cemeteries or execution sites, and the idea that they did seems absurd.

The best guess is that by the fourth century the excavations for the tomb on a site previously dedicated to Venus, were conducted inside the existing walls. But logic dictates the real reasons for the use of the site is that it was an attempt by newly empowered Christians, following on Constantine’s edict of toleration in 313CE, to commandeer a popular pagan site—a pattern of expropriation which would endure in the Middle East throughout the Middle Ages when Christian churches were converted into mosques.

NatGeo says that the body of Jesus Christ was “laid on a shelf or burial bed hewn from the side of a limestone cave following his crucifixion by the Romans in A.D. 30 or possibly 33. Christian belief says Christ was resurrected [sic] after death, and women who came to anoint his body three days after the burial reported that no remains were present.” Actually, the gospels say nothing about a shelf and as we have seen the anointing story is not just problematical but contradicts the chronology of the fourth gospel. It doesn’t really give us much to go on.

It all comes down to one question: What is the evidence for this being the right place, the tomb where Jesus was laid to rest?

The evidence is, to say the least, flimsy and uncompelling. Fourth century stories and legends recounted by the eminently credulous Christian bishop and writer Eusebius of Caesarea, tell us that Constantine’s mother, Helena, was directed to the precise tomb by tour guides eager to please the emperor’s emissaries, and especially his mum, who had become a relic collector of the first magnitude after her conversion.

The story in Christian tradition is that the emperor Hadrian (117-138) had a Roman temple erected over the site of the tomb during his reign in order to assert Roman power over Jerusalem and to discourage Christians worshiping there. But the evidence points in the opposite direction: Hadrian’s Jerusalem was a city in ruins and in need of rebuilding. He was discouraged from restoring the Jewish temple which he regarded as a warren of sedition during the Bar Kochba rebellion of 135. The place of worship that was the focal point for him was the Temple Mount, not a Christian site but a ruined Jewish one. The Sepulchre site is referenced in no Roman writer from his time but only two centuries later by Christians like Eusebius. The writers of the fourth century were interested in stressing the Christian character of the “new” city of Jerusalem as a Roman city with Christian associations that could be exploited for religious and political gain.

Constantine, Eusebius’ exact contemporary, was the first Christian emperor; Christians in his reign could be regarded as good Roman citizens and not as aliens or derivative Jews, as in the old days. Having a church like Holy Sepulchre even though an archaeological fiction (hagiography in stone), would replace in the Latin imagination the centrality of the Jewish temple—indeed, could become the focal point for the new religion, which is exactly the propagandistic value it came to have when the Muslims built their own shrine, the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque, on the spot where Muhammad supposedly ascended into heaven on his “Night Journey” from Arabia.

The key to the mythical nature of Holy Sepulchre as a “real” location is in the sources, not in the rocks or limestone–a bit like the key to Noah’s Ark is not in the work of schlock archeologists using the Bible as a treasure map, but in the Gilgamesh epic written 1000 years before it.

The legendary beginnings can be traced back to the person who started it all, a pious woman named Helen. Constantine’s mother was a peasant from Nicomedia (called a stabularia, which may mean inn-keeper or prostitute). Later tradition, since debunked, tried to make her the daughter of a British prince, but the historical Helen was a superstitious woman who married Constantius Chloris and gave birth to their only child, the future emperor, in 274.

Chloris, rising in the ranks, divorced her and married Theodora, the daughter of the emperor Maximentius. Constantine, according to some dicey sources, remained faithful to his birth mother, called her to court on the death of his father, and even had coins struck with her image. But he seemed happiest when she was out of town, and gave her seemingly tons of money to build Christian churches all across the empire—in Rome, Trier, other parts of Europe, and all over Palestine. The merest rumor that a saint had prayed in a local garden or a martyr’s blood had been spilt in a stadium would cause Helena to spring into action, the biggest prize of all being finding the place of the crucifixion and the burial site of Jesus. “She lavished on that land her bounties and good deeds, she explored it with remarkable discernment and visited it with the care and solicitude of the emperor himself.” But with respect to Holy Sepulchre there are very many issues Eusebius does not place Helena at the site of the excavation, nor does he mention the finding of any crosses. He simply says she was convinced that it was the right place. But later writers like Rufinus and Socrates Scholasticus find this inadequate. In fact as time passes, more details are added to make the site the irrefragable place of the burial of Jesus. By the end of the fourth century there are plenty of accounts of people venerating relics of the cross of Jesus –said to be found with two others near the place of the tomb, and references to a church being built on the site where they were found, which of course has nothing to do with their authenticity or the accuracy of Helena’s pious sleuthing. Before long, it was possible also to venerate the crown of thorns, the pillar at which Christ was scourged, and the lance that pierced his side. The entire operation is called into question by the narratives themselves, and especially by the deafening silence of the gospels in respect of details.

Socrates Scholasticus (born c. 380), in his Ecclesiastical History, gives a full description of the discovery. I think it is important to quote the whole extract from this writer since on it the entirety of the pious tradition associating the archaeological site, stirring the imagination, and weakening the knees of the National Geographic team depends on it:

{Helena the emperor’s mother} found three crosses in the Sepulchre: one of these was that blessed cross on which Christ had hung, the other two were those on which the two thieves that were crucified with him had died. With these was also found the tablet of Pilate, on which he had inscribed in various characters, that the Christ who was crucified was king of the Jews. Since, however, it was doubtful which was the cross they were in search of, the emperor’s mother was not a little distressed; but from this trouble the bishop of Jerusalem, Macarius, shortly relieved her. And he solved the doubt by faith, for he sought a sign from God and obtained it. The sign was this: a certain woman of the neighborhood, who had been long afflicted with disease, was now just at the point of death; the bishop therefore arranged it so that each of the crosses should be brought to the dying woman, believing that she would be healed on touching the precious cross. Nor was he disappointed in his expectation: for the two crosses having been applied which were not the Lord’s, the woman still continued in a dying state; but when the third, which was the true cross, touched her, she was immediately healed, and recovered her former strength. In this manner then was the genuine cross discovered. The emperor’s mother erected over the place of the sepulchre a magnificent church, and named it New Jerusalem, having built it facing that old and deserted city. There she left a portion of the cross, enclosed in a silver case, as a memorial to those who might wish to see it: the other part she sent to the emperor, who being persuaded that the city would be perfectly secure where that relic should be preserved, privately enclosed it in his own statue, which stands on a large column of porphyry in the forum called Constantine’s at Constantinople. I have written this from report indeed; but almost all the inhabitants of Constantinople affirm that it is true. Moreover the nails with which Christ’s hands were fastened to the cross (for his mother having found these also in the sepulchre had sent them) Constantine took and had made into bridle-bits and a helmet, which he used in his military expeditions. (NPNF 2,02.17)

In short, the entire tradition of Holy Sepulchre derives from this piece of typical fourth century hagiography, a miracle story that is (as archaeologist like to put it) an etiology of devotional practices that grew up around a local shrine, and in turn validated the significance of the shrine. But of course devotion is not history. The chances that a superstitious stable girl turned Christian, sent on mission by her wavering son to satisfy her religious appetites, stumbled three centuries on to the location of the execution and burial of Jesus—that possibility must approach statistical zero.

And there is a larger point. Media concerns like National Geographic, a subsidiary of Fox News, and the History Channel and the Discovery Channel have learned long since that credulity and gullibility sells: that people like myths and monsters more than they like facts and probability. And that is the great disservice these programs do to people who watch them. In a time when critical thinking was never more talked about and less practiced, sensations like this make the careful separation of fact and fiction that much more difficult for those of us who prefer fact. In fact, we do not know when Jesus died, where he died, or where he was buried. Even if we knew one of these things, we do not know the other two, and pious veneration has made the knowing all but impossible. Indeed, if I were a Christian, I think I would say, What does it matter? The whole point is, he wasn’t there very long, was he?

That being the case, you will not be surprised to learn that the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, built over a site almost certainly legendary, was founded by Helena in 327 after she was assured by local pilgrims that she had—exactly the right spot. Alas, however, modern research has shown that the cult of Adonis-Tammuz originated the shrine and that it was the Christians who took it over, substituting the worship of Jesus.

It doesn’t matter how it happened now. It happened. And now Donald Trump, the least qualified man ever to be nominated for or elected to high office in America, an untested and completely unworthy president-elect, elected by ¼ of the eligible electorate in a year when nearly 50% of Americans preferred to stay home and watch it unfold as a reality TV extravaganza, this same Donald Trump will be President of the United States. Why? Because Americans, we are assured, love change. It doesn’t matter what kind of change. Change with bacon and cheese crumbles is best. But any change will do.

This is an essay about change. I live in China where change is the new evangelization. The old China, before 1978, was tied to the Communist revolutionary past and political correctness, Party-style. But since 1978 and especially since 1986, China has embraced a progressive agenda of internationalism, measured involvement in world affairs–from Africa to the rest of Asia and South America, where this week President Xi is visiting, and emerging global leadership in technology and engineering. The world’s second largest economy will become the world’s largest economy while Trump is president, if he survives to serve a second term.

China is heavily invested in space, and has the advantage of sixty years of US and Russian space science to build on, giving it leapfrog advantages over other countries including the EU and India. It is not just re-doing the American space program; it is doing it better. Unlike the US, China regards space as essential to its international scientific prestige. It is looking forward to the day, within twenty years, when the International Space Station is retired and the planned Chinese Space Platform will be the only town in the game. Last month, China launched its first cargo rocket, the Long March-7, and currently has astronauts orbiting the earth for a month in Shenzhou 11 spacecraft launched atop a Long March 2F. The Chinese love space; America, even amidst talk of a Mars mission, don’t really care anymore. The attitude among the Second Amendment crowd who supported Trump is Call me if we get there.

Ass recently as 2012 when I first arrived in China, the NPC was a bit cagey about the levels of pollution in the capital. The United States Embassy, with its own small meteorological lab atop their compound, insisted on taking and publishing daily readings showing the rather horrible quality of the air. But when the correlation between rapid development and the amount of unbreathable and dangerous particulate matter in the air became an undeniable certainty, China took bold and assertive steps towards correction. It now has the most ambitious program to curb emission-based pollution of any country, and its long term plan involves billions of dollars to be invested in making China a clean-air country by 2026. No one in China—no citizen of Beijing or Shanghai or Hangzhou—has any doubt that people cause pollution and pollution is ruining the planet: they see it and smell it and want it fixed. My students in Hangzhou and in Beijing are practical. On high pollutant days—every day in Beijing—they wear face masks the way some of us might carry umbrellas if there are clouds. If Mr Trump would care to spend December in Beijing, he might be persuaded too. But it is unlikely that he will. Instead he will sit beneath a blue canopied sky in Washington DC trying to repeal laws and calling global warming a hoax. He will do this, he says, because he wants to make America Great Again.

China is open for science, and business, and knowledge. It has been opening its door to the West since the premiership of Deng Xiaoping in 1978. That doesn’t mean that it has embraced everything western. Newspapers and media are still state controlled. Certain media sites are still blocked—Facebook and YouTube being the most conspicuous by their absence. Google is difficult to access, and to do so now most people have to install a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to get at the quarantined sites. It is inconvenient, some would say reactionary. But this is a place where the stability of the state as an extension of the stability of the family, and stability is of great importance to progress. Some Western ideas seem prima facie tendentious and destabilizing to the Chinese; westernization American style is still approached cautiously, and I personally disagree with the measures taken to limit them because as an American I believe in personal liberty and freedom of conscience (and speech) more than I do in the need for the state to adjudicate what is in its best interest. But my belief can now be talked about openly and argumentatively in classrooms and on television–and often is these days. It is the constructive equivalent of the absurd “abortion” debate in America.

On the other hand, America’s free press is not a good advertisement for its self-evident value. The recent election proved, in the persons of Anderson Cooper and Wolf Bliztzer and Don Lemon and a dozen others, how the nabob press of Mencken’s day is the nabob press of our day: idea-poor, inarticulate, wretched at the analysis of ideas and events, historically and intellectually bankrupt. By comparison, the level of political discussion and coverage of science and the arts on CCTV Chinese and English services is almost unremittingly impressive. A joke going through the expat community during the coverage of the election was, What can you do if you’re too dumb to play American football. Answer: Work as a news analyst for NBC.

***

Donald Trump did not mean to get elected the way he did. He is not clever enough to have done that. But what he managed to do by wearing the silly hat and interrupting the Nasty Woman at debates was to create a caricature that persuaded other men in silly hats who think women are nasty, and a fair number of women as well, that he stood for change.

Make America Great Again is the most simplistic of simplistic slogans. But the slogan was never challenged except by the facile Clinton riposte, America is already great. The fallacy that none of the nabob media, those information servants of Mencken’s booboisie, and none of the low information voters—on both sides—ever encountered was the fact that what makes America great is not just jobs, is not just keeping things made at home at home, your teenage daughter from taking care of “a situation,” is not preserving the ethnic purity of the work force, or being able to keep your assault weapon next to the umbrellas in the hall closet.

These things may well matter to Americans who pay mortgages and drive cars and have college debt. But we also saw how afraid either candidate was to talk about the things that have to happen to keep America great in comparison to other countries or even in reference to any serious measure of greatness, like influence and recognition of contributions to world culture. From blues to the electric lightbulb, from passenger jets to the moon, this is where America used to be great. None of this greatness had anything to do with a national social agenda, religiously driven righteousness, or its private culture wars.

It is not clear to me why someone didn’t stand up and say, Mr Trump, America’s “greatness” doesn’t depend on any of the things you’ve been talking about. We already have the biggest military in the world, with the biggest budget and the most commitments. The best air force, the most awesome navy and battle-ready infantry. So that’s not worth talking about. No one said that. Instead they talked about getting “tough” with ISIS.

No one said, Mr Trump, America’s universities are the best in the world—in the top-ranked 100 more than half are ours. But if you notice, universities in much smaller countries, and countries that weren’t in that league 20 years ago, are climbing, especially Chinese universities. China loves education. Even the uneducated love education. China loves science. Even people who don’t know much about chemistry or biology or physics—that is, most people–love science. They want it for themselves, their children. Their country. Because they know that science is a measurable, conspicuous way for a country to be great. Where did they learn that? From the United States and Russia, a long time ago.

No one said Mr Trump, American greatness comes from its artists, its playwrights, its musicians, and dancers. Its pop culture—of course—but also from its traditional culture, from hillbilly to spirituals and mountain folk songs. Imagine America in the future without a Bernstein, or a Murray Pariah or Yo Yo Ma, a Kandinsky or Edward Albee or Edith Wharton. It is not hard for someone who doesn’t read, and whose advisers don’t read, to imagine this. (What’s a casino but a fake palace without a library or a chapel, but lots of bathrooms)? But the world of culture and the arts knows that one of the reasons the twentieth century was the American century was because the times favoured artistic expression.

Twenty-first century China loves the arts. They love Chinese traditional arts and music and dance, and they love western music and the performing arts. Liao Yimei, author of “Rhinoceros in Love,” a 1999 play often taken as the starting point of China’s contemporary theater boom, said: “The Chinese government is rich and really wants to promote culture. Things happen very fast in China.” They are adapting and incorporating and synthesizing the two traditions all the time, creating something truly beautiful in opera and ballet that is uniquely Chinese. Since the time of Dai Ailian, who died in 2006, Chinese ballet has been among the most vigorous ballet cultures in the world.

America will run dry as soon as the inevitable bill passes the know-nothing Congress cutting the National Endowment for the Arts and NEH funding while defense spending and research projects on advanced weaponry sail through without debate. We have never been a great country without Anne Sexton and Robert Frost and Robert Joffrey and Peter Martins. Yet for Mr Trump, the arts, the most visible expression of a nation’s soul, have nothing to do with its visible “greatness.”

Why did no one say, Mr Trump, American greatness comes from its intellectuals and scientists, its innovative architects and engineers. It’s laborious to note that until recently (but note the phrase) the lion’s share of Nobel prizes has gone to American physicists and economists, and this year’s literature prize to a beloved folk singer. But that demographic is changing. Our essayists and social critics, from the time of Tom Paine to today, have been gadflies to a lazy republic. But there seem to be no lions any more, except Chomsky—no Susan Sontags or Arthur Schlesingers, no Allan Blooms or John Rawls—certainly no Reinhold Niebuhrs, Will Durants or Hannah Arendts. That pond, which included soul searching commentary on the nature and limitations of American democracy, has dried up, and in its place gag writers and comics give the country what it wants. It wants to laugh. We are out of tears.

China’s intellectuals are often “Party” thinkers, but as Mark Leonard noted in Prospect Magazine as long ago as 2008, despite the global interest in the rise of China, no one is paying much attention to its ideas and who produces them. “China,” Leonard says, “has a surprisingly lively intellectual class whose ideas may prove a serious challenge to western liberal hegemony.” One thing that became clear after the false start of the 1000 Flowers Campaign in 1957 and especially since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1986, China has begun the debate of the role of the intellectual in society. It is not strong enough or thorough enough just yet, but compared to America where the intellectual is a leper, and science is regarded, like the arts, as an extravagance, intellectualism is respected and taken seriously. China cannot yet love its critical intellectuals as they deserve to be loved, but it would like to. America by contrast has no real use for the life of the mind: it is to America what political dissidence is to China, the punishment being irrelevance rather than imprisonment or silencing. In the long run, however, it is the voice of Emerson and Thoreau, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Howard Zinn that changed our perception of America, in ways that will not let smart women and men go back to pre-reflective times.

China knows that a coherent vision of the state is necessary for a sustainable patriotism. It is simply no longer possible for Americans to feel the patriotism they once felt during the early twentieth century; it has been unrevivable—impossible– since Viet Nam, and even discussions of it seem nostalgic and stale. Except for the solitary exception of 9-11, Americans no longer are able to evoke patriotic emotions evoked by a single source or threat. In its place they have put a contrived interest in the security of the “homeland” (mark the phrase). They have learned to fear Syrians, Mexican immigrants, undocumented “aliens.” And they have learned to “foreignize” political correctness, gay marriage, abortion rights, Obamacare, and sensible limits to second amendment “rights” as a composite European bogeyman whose slaying would make America the awesome country—safe, secure, unequivocally self-confident– it once was.

But it was never that country.

The trick has been to persuade America that its greatness lay in things that outsiders do not regard as marks of greatness–domestic issues, some terribly minute– that rise or fall with changes in the national mood. The French do not care what Americans think about abortion. A universal health care program as a national issue in Britain is no longer seriously on the table. Neither is evolution. The Europeans and many other places in the world have never had to contend with idiotic debates about who should possess a gun, answering the question with a resounding Almost no one. Immigration and ethnic cohesion, it is true, is still a topic for many places in the world. But is usually arises only when a segment of a population behaves in a way criminally inconsistent with the behaviour expected of the general population. No one in Germany really expects that massive deportation of admitted immigrants is going to take place, just as no one (of electoral significance) in France is calling for the massive displacement of people of Algerian or North African descent just because a few criminals lurk among them. No one really thinks that doing such things will make Britain or France or Germany great again.

China, too, which is an overwhelmingly one-race country, Chinese of Han descent, has been reactively sensitive to the needs of its minorities. Its indigenous Uighur residents in the far west province of Xinjiang are one of 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities and there have been periodic flashes of ethnic violence in the last eight years. But more recently, in line with its cautious policy of diversification, a country which has not traditionally encouraged the intrusion of foreigners has seen the settlement of Africans, Asians from Korea, the Philippines and a fair number of Europeans and Americans as foreign experts, consultants, teachers, and businessmen. China’s passport and visa regime ensure that immigration is tightly controlled. It needs to do more in the interest of global responsibilities to share the world’s refugee resettlement problem. But it approaches this topic with some fear and trembling, knowing that the world watches its moves, knowing that simply throwing money at a human tragedy of this scale in not enough. But this is not the salient point. The juicy bit is that China self-consciously strives to overcome its famous, self-protective insularity, while America slips conformably back into the world-be-damned isolation of the nineteenth century.

It is hard to say that Trump’s imbecilic identification of greatness with American domestic prejudices will become a matter of commentary anytime soon. So far, it has gone unnoticed. But it is pretty obvious that deporting refugees, repealing health care protection, or limiting a woman’s control over her own body, and giving free license to polluters will not be seen by anyone outside Alabama as indicators of Greatness. During the campaign the president-elect often complained that America is the laughing stock of the world: he may be right, and China and Russia, its old-time adversaries, will be laughing the loudest as the clown takes the wheel of the crazy car.

About the Author

R. Joseph Hoffmann is Professor of Humanities and Teaching Development at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, PRC.

]]>http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/donald-trump-faces-the-chinese-century/feed/4African Woman but Not Religioushttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/african-woman-but-not-religious/
Mon, 31 Oct 2016 18:22:40 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=96786]]>She is from Ndola in the self-proclaimed Christian country, Zambia, but currently, Cynthia lives in one of the European countries where she works as a school teacher. Not too long ago, Cynthia came out as a non-theist. She has joined the growing number of African women who openly and publicly identify as non-religious. I spoke to Cynthia some months ago and she narrated to me her tortuous journey from religion to irreligion. It is a journey that took this brave, thoughtful and curious woman across different Christian denominations but also across continents.

Cynthia was born into a ‘religious’ family in her native country Zambia and had a religious upbringing. The mother was a Seventh Day Adventist, and as a child, Cynthia attended her mother’s church. However, she told me that her father was indifferent to religion. In fact, she claimed that she owed her intellectual awareness and insatiable curiosity to him. “My father encouraged me to read and ask questions, he urged me to question all claims and beliefs without fear,” Cynthia told me as she recounted her evolution as a non-religious and secular person.

Even as a child, Cynthia noticed the contradictions in the teachings of the different Christian denominations, and wondered why such conflict existed. Though she attended a Seventh Day Adventist church, Cynthia went to a Catholic school where she was exposed to different Christian teachings. However, the conflict in the doctrines of these two churches set her on the path of doubt and critical inquiry. She became suspicious and mistrustful of religious dogmas.

According to Cynthia the Seventh Day Adventist taught her that the Roman Catholic Church was an evil church, and that the papacy was the mark of the beast. Her education at a different mission school gave Cynthia an opportunity to compare the teachings of the Catholic Church and that of the Seventh Day Adventist. And she noticed that the Adventist church was fundamentalist in its approach. “They preached so much about the end of the world,” she stated.

Cynthia had issues with Catholic prayers, in particular the Hail Mary. She queried why such prayers should be said. The conflicts and contradictions in the teachings of the two churches were confusing to her. Hence she never found any strong reason to belong either to the Seventh Day Adventist or the Catholic Church. In fact, at a point she decided to suspend going to any church until she became convinced of what to believe in and which church to attend.

During this break from religious worship and church attendance, Cynthia came in contact with members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They gave her a book on questions people ask. Cynthia expected that the book would provide answers to the questions that have perturbed her and agitated her mind but it did not. In fact the teachings of the Jehovah’s Witness added to her confusion.

Members of Jehovah ’s Witness tried to persuade her to join their religion but Cynthia said she was not convinced of their teaching. Later she went back to her mother’s church, the Seventh Day Adventist, and tried to get baptized. The church agreed to baptize her but on the condition that she stopped wearing ear rings but she refused. So she could not be baptized.

Some years ago, Cynthia moved to Europe where she is living at the moment and tried joining the Seventh Day Adventist church in her region in the quest for family and community feeling. However the religious romance was short-lived because after watching a BBC report on witchcraft-related abuse of children by Christian churches in Africa, the scales of transcendental illusion fell from her eyes. She literally woke up from her dogmatic, supernatural and theistic slumber.

Cynthia said that she later listened to the audio book of Carl Sagan, and after reading other books by Isaac Asimov, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens, she could no longer continue to identify as a religious and god believing person. Reason overtook religion in her quest for truth, knowledge and meaning. Cynthia eventually found the courage to come out and openly identify as a freethinking non-religious African woman.

]]>Stopping Olukoya and Witch hunting in UK Black Communitieshttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/stopping-olukoya-and-witch-hunting-in-uk-black-communities/
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/stopping-olukoya-and-witch-hunting-in-uk-black-communities/#commentsTue, 06 Sep 2016 17:29:45 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=95962]]>Witchcraft related abuse is a very serious problem in African migrant communities in the UK. There is documented evidence that these abuses are linked to activities of African pastors and African initiated churches. Unfortunately efforts to address this problem are bogged down by concerns over racism, minority rights and abuse of religious liberty. We should not allow such concerns to distract us from addressing this problem.

Vulnerable members of the African migrant communities in the UK, particularly children, are at risk of being tortured and murdered by relatives who accuse them of witchcraft. Many of such horrific treatments in the name of witchcraft go unreported because victims are often defenseless infants, and the abuses take place in the name of religion, particularly Pentecostal Christianity. Pentecostal churches are spreading rapidly across the African migrant communities in the West.

These churches are prosecuting a new wave of witch hunting because Pentecostalism thrives on literal interpretation of the Bible, and the African Pentecostalists believe that witches should be tortured to death as written in the book of Exodus (22:18). Though Pentecostal pastors may not directly engage in these abuses, they are still complicit in the crimes because their witchcraft preachings, healing and deliverance sermons incite violence, hatred and abuse of vulnerable members of the population.

Thus what is going on in the African migrant communities is a very complex phenomenon. Witchcraft related abuse in these places is difficult to track, tackle and address. Tackling this issue is in fact more challenging because many of these churches exist and operate freely in Africa, in places like Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Congo DRC where their witch hunting activities are seen as forms of spiritual and social service, and the governments are too weak to sanction them.

But this is not the case with the UK, is it? So one effective way we can use to address this problem is by sanctioning witch hunting pastors and churches.

It is important to monitor sermons, prayer points and requests, and gospel ministrations in these churches that already exist and operate in African migrant communities to ensure that they are not pretexts to incite witchcraft branding and witch persecution. Also, as part of the measures to tackle witchcraft related abuse in African and black communities, we can stop witch-hunting African pastors from coming to worsen the situation by spreading their hateful messages in churches or branches of their churches in the West.

This should not be interpreted as racism or denying these pastors their rights to freedom of religion, movement or association. No, not at all.It is rather a way to break through the silent wall of witchcraft related abuse of children in these faith communities.

A country such as the UK must make it categorically clear that they are opposed to the activities of those pastors, prophets, bishops, medicine men or women who are fuelling, aiding and abetting witchcraft related abuse.

Since governments of countries where these pastors operate cannot stop or sanction them, the government of the UK can do so. Can’t it? Yes the UK authorities can send a very strong message to the churches and their affiliates in the country and to other witch hunting churches and pastors in Africa: Your witch hunting gospel, deliverance and healing services are not welcomed here.

This should be the case with Pastor D.K. Olukoya, the general overseer of the Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries worldwide. Pastor Olukoya is ministering at the 2016 ‘Deliverance, Prayerquake and Anointing Service’ to be held in London on September 16 2016.

The program will feature healing, salvation, deliverance and yoke breaking. Pastor Olukoya is a witch-hunting pastor who has devoted his ministry to destroying the ‘ministry of witchcraft’. One of his widely known books is Overpowering Witchcraft. This book, which was published in 1999, is another manual for witch finding and destruction because it contains the ‘secrets of the power over witchcraft’ and some ‘tips’ for those experiencing witchcraft attacks. The book contains sections that spell out how to disgrace the ministry of witchcraft and how to overpower the witches in our households. In fact the book’s cover has an illustration of the violent way that a witch should be treated or destroyed.

As one should expect, branches of Olukoya’s church, the Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries (MFM) have, in line with the injunction of their general overseer, instituted prayer points to ‘disgrace and overpower the ministry of witchcraft’.

A branch of MFM in the UK has as part of its prayer points that: “Every plantation of witchcraft in my family? What are you waiting for? DIE IN JESUS NAME. Every pattern of household witchcraft in my family, I BURY YOU TODAY, IN THE NAME OF JESUS” (Emphasis mine). The MFM branch in Hackney has a program to deal with ‘polygamous witchcraft’ and states that women in polygamous witchcraft used to be in ‘deep trouble and in darkness’.

But no branch of MFM captures the church’s anti witchcraft program in a more violent language than the branch in Houston, in the United States. The church has devoted its prayer points to: ‘Overturning the Seat of Household Witchcraft’, ‘Destroying Witchcraft Cauldron’, ‘Power against witchcraft burials’, ‘Victory by power over witchcraft verdict’, Destroying the traveling routes of witchcraft’, ‘Dismantling the communication systems of witchcraft’, ‘Breaking down the transportation of witchcraft’, ‘Destroying the altars of witchcraft’, Breaking witchcraft curses’, ‘Destroying the covens of witchcraft’, Destroying the hold of marine witchcraft’, ‘Vomiting the food of witchcraft’, ‘Destroying the infirmity of Witchcraft’, ‘Plucking out the eyes of Witchcraft’, ‘Dismantling witchcraft Embargo on Finances’, ‘Destroying the throne of witchcraft’.

These are not innocuous prayer requests against spiritual problems as some may think but a call to action against ‘witches’ in the families and communities. They are prescriptions of how to treat persons who embody witchcraft, marine and evil spirits.

Churches and pastors that sanction and sanctify witch hunting should be called to order and be made to understand how potentially harmful, dangerous and destructive their messages are. The UK authorities should not turn a blind eye on these witch hunting pastors and their church activities particularly with the problem of witchcraft related abuse in the African migrant communities.

This MFM program on September 16 should be an opportunity for the UK government to show its commitment to tackling witchcraft branding and other faith based abuses in the African migrant communities. The UK authorities should stop this witch-hunting pastor from coming to preach at the proposed event in London. They should use this event to send a strong message to Olukoya and to Mountain Fire and Miracle Ministries Worldwide, as well as to other witch hunting pastors and churches in Africa and in African migrant communities: Stop the witch-hunts or we will stop you.

]]>http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/stopping-olukoya-and-witch-hunting-in-uk-black-communities/feed/1Hajj Controversy and the Imperative of a Secular Nigeriahttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/hajj-controversy-and-the-imperative-of-a-secular-nigeria/
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 01:08:53 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=95617]]>The reactions that have trailed the decision by the Buhari government to subsidize this year’s Hajj, despite the fact that the Nigerian economy is in recession, underscores the necessity of separating church (mosque) and state. Last year, President Buhari announced the discontinuation of state sponsorship of both Muslim and Christian pilgrimages as a cost cutting measure. He made it clear that stopping state funding of pilgrimages would save some money that could be devoted to development programs.

But Buhari has refused to make good this pledge and his government has continued to subsidize pilgrimages and engage in these wasteful schemes. Now instead of seeing how state subsidization of pilgrimages, whether Christian or Muslim, is impoverishing the country and further destroying an economy that is already in the doldrums, many segments of the Nigerian population particularly those who feel that their religion is favoured by this current decision of the Buhari government, are tendering flimsy reasons and excuses to justify what is clearly a policy blunder, and a mark of governmental ineptitude.

From their comments and reactions Nigerians who are in support of state subsidization of Hajj have made it seem as if those who are opposed to this decision are Christians who did not protest when such subsidy was extended to them last year by the same government. In fact many Nigerians who are pro-Hajj subsidy think that those who are protesting are pro-Jonathans who could not speak out against such measures when Goodluck Jonathan was in power and who have yet to get over the pain of defeat at last year’s election. Particularly if one bears a name such as mine, there is a tendency to put the person in the box of those who never see anything good in what Buhari does. As I have sown in this piece, the peddlers of these narratives have not really taken a critical look at the proposal to subsidize pilgrimages.

Unfortunately, these misplaced and mistaken persuasions continue to re-echo in the discussions of both illiterate and semi-illiterate Nigerians, as well as in the debates by so called educated and apparently enlightened persons in the country whom one thinks should know better. Many people across Nigeria are still trapped in their ethnic and religious cocoons and find it difficult to rise and reason beyond their parochial, ‘tribal’, clannish and sectarian interests, and begin to appreciate and embrace collective and common supra-ethnic and supra-religious decencies by rallying against divisive, authoritarian, oppressive, dogmatic and exploitative religious policies as in this case.

Hence, I would like to reiterate that this author is not a Christian or a Muslim and one needs not be before speaking out for or against a policy that negatively affects us all. Again, it is not all Nigerians who are Christians or Muslims who support state subsidization of religious pilgrimages. There are millions of Nigerians who are traditional religious worshippers and adherents of other faiths, religions or philosophies. In fact a proper census would actually reveal the millions of Nigerians who are non-religious – including atheists, agnostics and freethinkers.

Having said that, the issue remains: Why do some Nigerians think that the government is justified in subsidizing religious pilgrimages, in this case I mean both Christian and Muslim pilgrimages?

First of all let us look at the theological aspect of the issue. Both Christians and Muslims believe that God or Allah exists and is omnipotent. That means God or Allah is capable of doing anything. And this is why they go to pilgrimages to the holy lands, the earthly homes – to revere him/her (still not sure of the gender). Now why can’t the Christian and islamic God provide them with the means to go for pilgrimage?

Why are Muslims and Christians interested in getting worldly state financial support when they truly believe that there is an otherworldly provident God whom they worship and who provides and can provide for and satisfy all human needs particularly of those who worship it? Has the state now turned into the God or Allah whom Muslims and Christians worship? Why do you need the earthly dollar rates whether it is at 160 or 197 naira? What kind of believers are you, Christians and Muslims of Nigeria, because for me this is the time to show your faith in the heavenly God or Allah? And you are not doing that. Instead of proving that your Jesus or Allah-God is one who provides for his people, you are putting your faith in the state subsidy. State subsidy? Not Allah subsidy? Not Christ subsidy?

Now Muslim friends, what do you need state subsidy for when Allah is there? You believe that Allah is omnipotent right? So why can’t you go to him? Why can’t the almighty and benevolent Allah get Saudi Arabia to send chartered planes or air tickets to come and convey you to the holy land? Or you have forgotten that you spend precious time about five times daily talking to this Allah? Now why can’t you ask him to send you money for Hajj? I mean why are you hankering over state money? Why are you bickering over dollar rate and making it seem as if your faith and fate now lies in dollars, not in Allah?

Now my Christian friends, you believe in Jesus as the savior and as a miracle worker, am I correct? So why do you need a state subsidy to travel to Jerusalem? Why can’t Jesus send you the money, after all he was the one whom you believe turned water into wine in Galilee right? Jesus fed multitudes with five loafs and two fish and later died and rose from the dead? Can’t he prove that he is still the alpha and Omega now and send you dollars for pilgrimages like manna from heaven? Or has Jesus suddenly stopped working miracles and wonders?

Why can’t Jesus send his angels to come and take you to Jerusalem for the pilgrimage, please? Or has Jesus’ mystical capacity been suddenly disabled? Has it expired? I mean, this is the time to hold you all both Christians and muslins to account, because for some time you have been peddling these narratives which you don’t put into effective use when the time comes.

You have been indoctrinating young Nigerians with all sorts of religious nonsense and getting people to believe that Allah and Jesus are really all powerful supernatural entities, when they are not. You have sanctioned, imprisoned or killed many Nigerians for their unbelief, for blaspheming, for insulting your God or Allah and now when it comes to showing the potency and existence of this your god, you have chickened to a corner asking for subsidy. Is this not a classical demonstration of lack of faith? Do you Muslims and Christians want the government to subsidize the supernatural power of your Jesus God or Allah? Or you want the government to substitute for the putative supernatural power of God or Allah?

So, theologically pilgrimage makes no sense, because after all God or Allah is supposed to be everywhere. So why travel to the holy land? Why? To go and do what? In that case, pilgrimage is just like travelling to ‘meet’ in Mecca or Jerusalem somebody who is already in Nigeria. Is that not absurd? Why embark on this patently futile venture? Why engage in such a self-ridiculing undertaking that, going by recent events, exposes you to the risk of losing your life?

Now assuming you want to embark on such superfluity, why ask for state subsidy and go about it in ways that expose your religious redundancy to public scrutiny? Even if out of cheer curiosity, you want to embark on such a mission, shouldn’t it have been more appropriate to do so as strictly a private affair and at the expense of the bearer of this religious burden, not at the state’s. In fact it is advisable not to notify the public that you need taxpayers’ money to go and throw stones at the devil in Saudi Arabia. This wise counsel is just to avoid being scrutinized and pilloried in ways that might ‘offend’ religious sensibilities that have been hard wired to fantasy and profligacy.

That leads me to the penultimate point, state sponsorship of pilgrims makes no economic sense for a poor country with a distressed economy such as Nigeria. Going to pilgrimage to Mecca or Jerusalem does not contribute to the economy of the country. In fact state funding of pilgrimages depletes the nation’s resources and to see a government that blames the prevalent economic hardship in the country to reckless spending by the former regime embark on the luxury of subsidizing pilgrimages is shocking. Worse is seeing many Nigerians laud such a scheme as a mark of sterling leadership.

First, the economies of the destination countries of these pilgrimages – Saudi Arabia and Israel – are far better than that of Nigeria and pilgrimages benefit them and their economies because these religious tours bring in foreign exchange earnings. Without state subsidy many Nigerian religious tourists would definitely travel for pilgrimages and contribute to these economies. So giving state subsidy is making additional contributions to the economies of the destinations countries at the expense of our own distressed economy. Is that not a shame? Which reasonable government does that?

Those who govern Nigeria at this point in time should be utterly ashamed of themselves for making this country a laughing stock. Look at the situation throughout the country. There is hyperinflation, scarcity of food, lack of jobs, violent crimes, limited power supply, decaying infrastructure etc. And here we are talking about subsidizing Hajj and Christian pilgrims.

Think Nigerians Think. Wake up, People of Nigeria wake up.

Why can’t Nigerians read in between the lines? Why is it that even the most educated within the Muslim community are often silent when it comes to speaking out against the injustices and exploitations in the name of Islam? Why are the Christians not speaking out against the subsidy of pilgrimages to Jerusalem at a time people are dying of hunger and preventable diseases? Why can’t Nigerians understand that state sponsorship of pilgrimages is impoverishing and underdeveloping their economy? In 2014, there were claims by the largely Muslim elite in Northern Nigeria that Boko Haram violence had nothing to do with Islamic fanaticism but every thing to do with the economic impoverishment and marginalization of Northern Nigeria.

They put the blame mainly on the government of Jonathan and saw the election of Buhari as an opportunity to address this situation. Now instead of Buhari giving concessions to small-scale business schemes or to those studying in Nigeria or overseas he is giving subsidy to Hajj and Christian pilgrims. Is subsidizing pilgrimages a way of tackling poverty and addressing economic marginalization in Northern Nigeria?

Unfortunately people who think that this recent decision favours their religion are of the view that those protesting the decision are doing so because they are angry that the subsidy benefits Muslims. Look, pro-subsidy Nigerians, whether they are Muslims or Christians, should bear in mind that if the Nigerian economy is good, it is good for everyone whether one is a Christian, Muslims or non-religious. In fact if the economy is robust enough, Christians and Muslims can afford to travel to Jerusalem and Mecca, Muslims can do main Hajj and lesser Hajj as many times as they want without any state subsidy. That leads me to my last point.

As I noted earlier, Nigeria is a culturally diverse country and as a religiously pluralistic society, it is imperative that the state be secular, that is unbiased for or against any religion. This principle is enshrined in article 10 of the nation’s constitution, which says that no part of the Federation or state should adopt any religion as state religion. This article is enshrined to ensure the neutrality and impartiality of the Nigerian state in matters concerning religion. It prohibits official discrimination on the grounds of religious belief or unbelief. However, this is not practically the case. In Muslim majority states, Islam is the state religion and sharia is the state law. Non-Muslims are treated as second class citizens. The Nigerian state cannot fulfill its role as the impartial guarantor of the rights and liberties of the citizens when state managers make policies that imply the adoption of Islam and/or Christianity as the state religion. By subsidizing the pilgrimages of Christians and Muslims, the state has invariably adopted Islam and Christianity as state religions. State managers are in breach of the constitution because they are officially discriminating against Nigerians who profess other faiths or none. In fact, by subsidizing pilgrimages and privileging Christianity and Islam, the secularity of Nigeria is imperilled.

]]>For Our Tomorrow and For Their Tomorrowhttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/for-our-tomorrow-and-for-their-tomorrow/
Sun, 24 Jul 2016 00:28:21 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=95355]]>To delegates from the host country Kenya, and attendees from South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania and Burundi; thank you for the honour of inviting me to address this meeting and for giving me the opportunity to contribute to strategizing against witch hunting in the region.

In the past weeks, I have pondered on what title to give this presentation in order to capture the urgency of the situation: In the course of my search and reflection, a popular line by an English poet, John Maxwell Edmonds, caught my attention. It says:

When you go home, tell them of us and say:
For your tomorrow; these gave their today.

On a second thought, I said, look we are not fallen soldiers yet. Instead we are standing soldiers and we are still fighting on. The issue we are tackling – witch hunting – is with us and affects us all directly and indirectly. The tomorrow we are fighting for is not distant or severed from us. The tomorrow we are fighting for is as much their tomorrow as it is our tomorrow. Let me say this on a more serious note: Youths of this continent, the tomorrow you are fighting for is your tomorrow. Never forget that witch hunting targets elderly persons and the youths of today are the elders and the targets of tomorrow.

Accusations of witchcraft are wreaking havoc in the lives of people across the region, among the educated and the non-educated, in families and communities, in rural and urban areas even as we are meeting here today. Witch hunting is silently destroying the future of our youths, and the future of our continent. We need to take a strong and decisive stand against it now. We need to make witch hunting history because whichever angle we try to look at this issue our youths are involved, African youths are both victims and victimizers. African youths are part of the problem. I ask you on this day: Will you join me in becoming part of the solution?

Now if you are undecided, consider this case in KwaZulu Natal where the police arrested in April last year 12 suspects between the ages of 18 and 30, I repeat 18 and 30, for burning an alleged ‘witch’ to death. These young people stormed the home of the alleged witch about 12.30 am, put tyres on his body and set him alight and in October last year two brother Donatus 28 and Eric 26 were sentenced to seven life terms plus 20 years for killing eight of their relatives including infants – a one year old, a three year old and a 4 year old following suspicions of witchcraft. Now, apart from wasting the lives of these innocent persons, have these youths not destroyed their future?

You can also take the case of Ali from Yendi in Northern Ghana. Ali finished high school and after some years could not find any meaningful job. In 2010, he consulted a diviner who told him that his step mother was responsible for his lack of progress. One early morning Ali confronted the step mother and stabbed her to death. The police arrested him and are prosecuting him for murder. He is currently on remand at Yendi prison. The trial is stalled because the witnesses have stopped coming to court. Look this young man may spend the rest of his life in jail. The late woman had children who were in primary school by the time she was killed and now have to grow up without a mother.

What about the case of Ayishetu, a 60 year old woman also from Ghana. She was enjoying her normal life till a younger woman in the compound fell down from a tree while she went to fetch firewood and died. Some relatives of the deceased went and consulted a diviner who declared that Ayishetu was responsible for the death. A male relative of the deceased went and attacked the woman with a matchete and inflicted deep cuts on her head and mouth. But she survived.

Last year Ayishetu asked a neighbor, Muhammad, to give her some soya beans after the harvest but Muhammad declined. He told Ayishetu that the harvest was poor and the beans were not enough. Two months later Muhammad took ill and died. While on sick bed, Muhammad recounted this experience to his family members and they threatened to kill Ayishetu. Not long after the death of Muhammad, Ayishetu came back from the market one day and found out that her chicken was missing. A neighbor, Musa, told her that he saw one young man, Kabiru, with the chicken. The woman went and confronted this young man but Kabiru denied having anything to do with her chicken and in the course of the exchange Ayishetu revealed the identity of the person who told her that Kabiru was the one who had stolen her chicken. The young man went and confronted Musa but Musa denied blatantly that he was the one who said so. Kabiru now returned with a gun and shot Ayishetu and nearly killed her. He said to her, “So you think you could kill me the way you killed Muhammad?” Ayishetu was rushed to Yendi hospital where the bullets were removed.

If you are still not convinced about the urgency of the situation, then need to listen to this. In Calabar in Southern Nigeria, Ben’s father woke up on July 3, some weeks ago and thought it was going to be like any other day. However it was not, because some hours later some youths stormed the compound with a ‘native doctor’ who pointed at him as one of those who were responsible for the death of young people in the community.

The youths seized the man and lynched him and destroyed his house. Ben fled the community and is now in hiding. Police have arrested some of the youths who were suspected to have lynched Ben’s father. The police would extort money from these suspects, detain and may later prosecute them. Friends, these young people who perpetrated these crimes and who are currently in police custody or at large, may never get to live ‘normal lives’ again. Ben may never get over the trauma of seeing his own father beaten and lynched by young people from his own community.

I tried getting my local contact person to reach out to other persons in Ben’s community who were affected by the incident but he told me that it was dangerous to go there because when the police officers went the coomunity to make arrests, a member of the gang shot and wounded one of the officers.

Young people make up the mobs that attack and burn witches in Kenya, Malawi Uganda, and Tanzania and in other parts of the region. Young people are mainly the witch hunters; they are also the children and relatives of the witch hunted.

African humanist youths, the world beckons on you to champion a movement against witch hunting. The world is looking up to you to provide leadership in this campaign for a rational Africa, a skeptical Africa, and yes for a secular Africa. The world needs you to foster critical thinking, skeptical rationality and other cognitive skills that are needed to interrogate and critically examine the use of witchcraft in explaining and making sense of misfortune. Will you rise up to this challenge?

African humanist youths, the world needs you to make other young Africans to understand that there is no connection between lack of job and witchcraft, loss of job and witchcraft, infertility and witchcraft, failure in exams and witchcraft, poverty and witchcraft, business failure and witchcraft, dreams and witchcraft, accidents and witchcraft, death and witchcraft, diseases and witchcraft. We need to make African youths aware that witches are imaginary beings and witchcraft is an imaginary crime. Nobody commits it and nobody should be punished for it. And I want to stress this, it is not only witches and witchcraft that are imaginary, but also God and godcraft, Allah and allahcraft, devil and devilcraft, jinn and jinncraft, Jesus Christ and christcraft, angels and angelcraft, demons and demoncraft, holy and evil spirits and spiritual craft, and other supernatural objects and formations which human beings have invented over the centuries and millennia to make sense of life, nature and experiences.

We need to challenge the magical, medicinal and religious establishments that peddle and propagate witchcraft narratives and schemes and use them to exploit people including the so called men and women of God or Allah, medicine men and women, the Nganga, Babalawo, Sangoma, Dibia, Bagha, Bouiglana and Tindana, Pastors, Mallams and Marabout, Prophets and Prophetesses and all who claim to have powers to diagnose and cure witchcraft, and to identify witches.

In addition, we need to robustly engage ‘scientific discourses’ on witchcraft in Africa because these debates often exoticize Africa. For too long, witchcraft has been used as the concept for studying and understanding Africa including African politics, economy, philosophy and science. When scholars tell us that witchcraft accusation is a mechanism for stabilizing the society or an idiom to make sense of modernity, let us draw their attention to the cases I have just cited and to the fact that witch hunting is a symptom of social dysfunction and lack of effective health care and strong modern state institutions

Friends, I am aware that to make witch hunt history in this region is not going to be an easy task. Sacrifices will be made. Dangers will be faced. Challenges will be met. Difficulties will be encountered. But more importantly history will be rewritten, and we shall be bending the arc of human progress towards enlightenment. So that it will eventually be said of us, it will be said of you, the African humanist youths and all who subscribe to the humanist outlook in this region, that for our tomorrow and for their tomorrow, we gave our today.

]]>Death and Dallashttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/death-and-dallas/
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/death-and-dallas/#commentsFri, 08 Jul 2016 19:17:34 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=95177]]>The Dallas shootings which claimed the lives of five people, and injured at least six others, were a long time coming.

That is not the same as saying that the cops who got shot deserved it, or that the shooter was justified, but rather acknowledging what has long gone on in America.

For years now we have been reading stories about black people getting killed by the police – and stories about the police getting away with it.

Tamir Rice was twelve years old when he was killed by a cop for playing with a toy gun in a park.

Castile was killed after he reached for his ID, after the officer told him to hand it over.

And who believes that a US jury would ever find his killer guilty?

So I look at Dallas, I hear the condemnations of the US president, and I see that this disaster was a long time coming.

Something has to change, and it has to change all the way through the system. A switch blade should not be a death sentence in a country where you can buy a sniper rifle, bullets should not be deployed against someone armed with Skittles.

Children should not be killed for playing in a park.

When the police kill, the public should expect justice. Without justice, there is only vengeance.

About the Author

]]>http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/death-and-dallas/feed/2Youths and the Imperative of Humanism in Africahttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/youths-and-the-imperative-of-humanism-in-africa/
Wed, 06 Jul 2016 23:49:51 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=95154]]>Humanism has become a necessity for Africa and for Africans particularly for young people across the region who are struggling to make sense of life and existence. Youths are critical to any human endeavor because they are the agents of hope, continuity, change and promise. Without young people, any society or initiative will go into extinction. Without young people, there is no future for humanity. So, it is with Africa and the humanist movement in the region.

Africans are not exposed to humanist ideals and values very early in life. This is why the meeting of young humanists in Nairobi, from July 22 to July 24, is a welcome development. Young Africans who are atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers will convene at the Kenyan capital to articulate strategies to end witch-hunts in Africa and to raise the profile of humanism among youths in the region. Surely, the sponsors and organizers of the event in Kenya should be commended for their foresight and thoughtfulness because such an event will go a long way to guarantee a future for humanism for the coming generation of Africans.

Religious indoctrination often characterizes child upbringing and family life in Africa. Thus African youths get to know about humanism much later in life or they know it by default particularly with the availability of the Internet in today’s world. Also there is a lot of pressure on young Africans to be religious even when religious doctrines mean very little to them. African children are compelled to pray by their parents and family members who impress on them very early that observing such a ritual is a mark of discipline. As they grow up, praying becomes a habit they find difficult to abandon even when it means very little to them. Praying becomes a tradition which they are to pass on to the coming generations.

Apart from the heavy religious indoctrination at home, there are a lot of brainwashing schemes outside the homes. Children from Muslim homes are sent to Quranic indoctrination centers where they are taught to memorize verses of the Quran while those from Christian homes go to catechism or Sunday school classes where they are further indoctrinated with the religious teachings. African youths are socialized in ways that do not allow them to think outside religious boxes. They grow up caged and mentally trapped in the cave of dogma, ignorance and superstition.

Apparently, Africans grow up without knowing that there is an alternative to religion and without understanding that belief in God is a choice and an option. It is equally unfortunate that formal education has not been helpful in opening the minds of young Africans because schools, colleges, and universities are owned, managed and controlled by religious or quasi-religious individuals and groups. Faith education is more or less the rule and secular instruction is the exception. Eventually, African youths receive faith-based schooling, which does not give them much freedom to think freely and question ideas particularly religious dogmas and superstitious beliefs. As educated people, many Africans find it difficult to question religious ideas because of fear of losing their jobs, business or political opportunities.

Religion is literally holding the African youth development hostage. To break this cycle of blind faith, dogma, and mental slavery. African youths need to be exposed to the ideals of humanism and free thought. Young people across the region need to understand that critical thinking is intellectually nourishing, existentially empowering and fulfilling. We cannot achieve this goal by just saying it but also by doing it, by helping African youths who are humanists or who appreciate humanism to fulfill this objective. African youths need to be supported as they embarked on this process of intellectual awakening and enlightenment. For instance, we need to support them as they try to organize events and articulate strategies to effectively promote humanism in the region.

African youths depend mainly on their family members who are religious and who would want them to be and to remain religious for financial support . Due to unemployment or underemployment, a self-supporting African youth humanist scheme is not viable at all. It does not make organizational sense. So all who support the Afrivcan youth humanist scheme should explore ways of sponsoring this youth project and put the African youth resource into use.

We need to support the African youth humanist project because there is a fierce competition for the youth capital in the region. Religious extremists and superstitious movements are recruiting and enlisting youths and using them to further their dark and destructive schemes. The sad thing is that young people are both the victims and the victimizers. Young people populate the Islamic militants groups that are killing, maiming and destroying lives and property in different parts of the country. Youths are the suicide bombers and also most of those who are killed or maimed on the process. Youths are the witch hunters in the communities. They are also those who are arrested and jailed for witchcraft related abuses. We need to ensure that the African youth capital is invested to further the cause of reason, science, and critical thinking. African youth resource has to be deployed to further life and happiness in the here and now, not in death and fathom happiness in the hereafter.The imperative of humanism is urgently needed to beat back the tide of witch hunting and religious fundamentalism in the region.

]]>Buhari: Breaking Ramadan Fast at State Expensehttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/buhari-breaking-ramadan-fast-at-state-expense/
Mon, 04 Jul 2016 00:38:01 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=95119]]>In Nigeria, politics is tied to religion. The State, Church and Mosque operate like conjoined twins. Efforts have been made to separate them with marginal success. Section 10 of the Nigerian constitution which says that ‘No part of the Federation or State should adopt any religion as state religion’ is a paper tiger because it seems to be of no import and has no practical effect or impact on how Nigerian politicians conduct state affairs at least by the incumbent presidents.

Any time that section 10 is invoked it is usually by the aggrieved ‘religious party or politician’, by the ‘marginalized’, ‘oppressed’ or ‘persecuted’ faith organizations that are negotiating for attention and space.

But as soon as some politicians from the aggrieved religion get into power, it becomes business as usual. They forget the provision in section 10 and turn the state house into a quasi church or mosque. They make religious affairs state functions and their religious allies turn a blind eye on such violations. In Nigeria, presidents from the two main religions seem to be taking turns in giving a religious character to statehouse activities. We saw this in the Aso Rock Chapel phenomenon during the reign of Presidents Obasanjo and Jonathan and now it seems to be the turn of President Buhari to give Islamic flavor to state functions and activities in spite of the constitution and the promised change in the way Nigeria is governed.

Anybody who is following activities at the state house, particularly since the Ramadan started would testify that the Nigerian president has really been busy. The evidence of this are photos of delegations that came to break the Ramadan Fast with him at the state house flooding social media. First was the photo where he broke fast with APC politicians and then with members of the diplomatic community. President Buhari has equally broken fast with a delegation from the National Council of Traditional Rulers. I guess there are others I have not mentioned who are on their way to breaking fast with the president as the Ramadan draws to a close.

Nobody is against the president breaking his fast during this month of Ramadan. He has the right to do so as a Muslim. However, breaking Ramadan fast should be the president’s private; not official business. Buhari should not tie his religious practice to his state duty. Breaking Ramadan fast is not a state function and should not be organized at state expense. It is an abuse of office and a mismanagement of state funds. Thus it makes economic sense that Buhari stops hosting this breakfast particularly this is a president who pledged to be frugal in managing state resources. This is a government that claims to be finding difficulty paying workers’ salaries. This is a government whose economic policies have condemned millions of Nigerians to a life a poverty, beggary and starvation. This is not a good example for the state governors. In fact how will Buhari feel if state governors use their resources to sponsor Iftar for journalists, teachers, party stalwarts, the business community etc?

Indeed using state money to fund religious activities is inconsistent with the frugal management of state resources that Buhari pledged during his campaign. For instance Buhari opposed state sponsorship of religious pilgrimages on the ground that the state could not afford to defray the costs and now he is using state money to fund Iftar. Is that not a contradiction? Where lies the difference? Whether one is using state money to fund Hajj or to host Iftar, the bottom line is that state resources are still expended on religious matters.

How does hosting Iftar make sense in terms of his fight against corruption? The Buhari government is investigating the use of state money by the last administration to fund political campaign activities and President Buhari is using state funds to finance religious activity in this case, IFTAR. He has apparently forgotten that these religious schemes are clearly ways of spending state money in a very untransparent and unaccountable form because very often when money is spent on supposedly religious activities people hardly raise any questions.

This is manly because many people do not want to be branded as anti Islam or anti Christianity as if being pro-islam or pro-christianity says anything about transparent, accountable and judicious use of state resources. Thus, Buhari may have blocked some avenue of syphoning state funds under the pretense of religion by discontinuing the state sponsorship of pilgrimages. However, he has ended up opening another channel of religious (Islamic) business: Breaking fast with Mr President. Buhari should steer the state machinery away from religion and discontinue official schemes that privilege any religion. That makes both economic and political sense. Yes, that is the change Nigeria needs at the moment.

]]>Atheism in Ethiopiahttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/atheism-in-ethiopia/
Fri, 17 Jun 2016 23:49:28 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=94911]]>A recent survey by the Pew Research Center has revealed that Ethiopia is the world’s most religious nation. According to this survey, nine-eight percent of Ethiopians thinks that religion is the most important part of their life. This development should not surprise anyone because Christianity and Islam are the dominant faiths in Ethiopia, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity accounts for most of the Christian population.

Though belief in God is pervasive, atheists, agnostics or freethinkers exist in Ethiopia and they are beginning to organize under different umbrella groups. Some of the atheist groups are visible online and they have Facebook pages, with hundreds and thousands of members, where they express themselves and socialize with people of like minds.

Recently I corresponded with two Ethiopian atheists, Yohannes and Girum, and they gave insights into the challenges and prospects of atheism in their country. Yohannes is an active member of one of the online groups. He told me that his becoming an atheist was a gradual process:

“It was rather an evolution over a couple of years. I didn’t identify as an atheist at first, nor did I know what I was becoming, lacking belief in gods, was called atheism. The main drive for my unbelief was the bible itself. I found it to be misogynist, racist, homophobic and backward”.

Girum, another atheist activist, embraced atheism after reading some books on philosophy: “Yes I’m an atheist, l became an agnostic in my teens mostly through common sense and by reading Amharic translations of different philosophical books and then after some time l began identifying myself as an atheist. I never told my parents about my disbelief in God but they knew that I had never been to Church for years and suspected that I was becoming skeptical. Yes I tell my friends about my atheism and they have no problem with it”.

Girum asserts that the deep religiosity in Ethiopia poses a big challenge to the cause of reason and free thought: “Yes, Ethiopia is a very religious nation with a large illiterate population. There is almost no space for reason and science. There is a tiny minority of atheists in the country”.

One major reason for the minority status of atheism in Ethiopia and in other African countries is because many atheists are in the closet and fear persecution by the theistic public if they go open and public with their atheism.

So, the challenge is not necessarily embracing atheism but coming out to friends and family members. Yohannes told me that he was a bit fortunate. “I guess I have been lucky with my beloved ones, they didn’t find it so much distressing. But I’ve lost some friends when I started to express my disbelief in their god or gods”. He notes that reactions to atheism vary according to family: “It depends on the particular family set up and even religious background I would say. For me, it was easy as my beloved ones are educated and accommodating. I have noticed Christian and Muslim parents and friends would react unfavorably as opposed to traditional religious people”.

Due to the socialist legacy in Ethiopia, the people are a bit more tolerant of atheism and do not find the outlook so offensive. Younger generations of Ethiopians are abandoning religion and if the trend continues, there would be a major shift in the country’s religious and theistic demography in the years ahead.

Yohannes stated that atheism could benefit Ethiopia in so many ways particularly in tackling superstition and religious extremism: “Atheism, a lack of belief in gods, could simply help the young people not to waste their energy on superstition and do something meaningful for a country riddled with poverty. Hatred amongst religious factions would diminish as many people would become irreligious”.

On that positive note, one may say that, though the present day Ethiopia may be designated as the world’s most religious nation, there are clear signs that with the flow of information, some renaissance is imminent in the country and the atheistic outlook has a great and promising future in the Horn of Africa.

]]>Selective Outrage: The Silence and Denial about Muslim Homophobiahttp://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/selective-outrage-the-silence-and-denial-about-muslim-homophobia/
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/selective-outrage-the-silence-and-denial-about-muslim-homophobia/#commentsTue, 14 Jun 2016 00:00:37 +0000http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?p=94847]]>Fifty people were gunned down in a mass terrorist shooting in Orlando; USA. They were deliberately targeted by a Muslim man, Omar Mateen,29, because they were gay. Outrage and shock followed the shooting which has been described as one of the worst mass shootings in US history. I will leave the issue of the gun ownership laws in the USA to one side, which are definitely a big part of the problem.

However, since the news broke I have noticed yet again those on the Regressive Left; Muslims and Religious Right, stating that ‘we should not ‘exploit’ the crime and talk about Islamic homophobia. As Hassan Raza put it:

If one thing that stays consistent every time there is a terrorist attack somewhere in the Western world where Muslims turn out to be the perpetrators is the response of majority of Muslims around the globe. Be it Paris, Brussels or the recent tragedy that hit Florida today, one of the responses that we often get to see is “Terrorism has no religion.” I personally believe nothing could be farther from truth. In my opinion, Terrorism definitely has a religion, whether it is the religion of Babbar Khalsa, Bajrang Dal, the Lord’s Resistance Army or the ISIS. As long as you’re carrying out attacks on innocent civilians in the name of your religion or after getting motivated by your religious sacred text, your terrorism, and extremism has a religion.

And yet homophobia and hatred is openly preached in US mosques. The Husseini Islamic Center in Florida, USA, invited Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar to speak at their Mosque. Dr. Sekaleshfar says the killing of homosexuals is the compassionate thing to do. In a 2013 speech Sheikh Sekaleshfar said this regarding gays:

Death is the sentence. We know there’s nothing to be embarrassed about this, death is the sentence…We have to have that compassion for people, with homosexuals, it’s the same, out of compassion, let’s get rid of them now.”

When Sheikh Sekaleshfar calls for the death of all homosexuals based on the tenets of Islam it cannot be ignored, he is an expert on Shariah Islamiyya or Islamic Law.

I taught English to a group of Algerian Muslim men a couple of months ago. Without any provocation from my side, they asked me what I thought about gay people. I had been warned by my boss (eager not to lose paying students) not to be pro-gay or say anything that might offend them (what like expressing views of a decent, tolerant human being?). He told me that a male teacher had said something to the class that showed he supported LGBT rights. They were deeply offended and told my boss they didn’t want him to teach them.So I turned the question on the men and asked them what they thought. They all stated without hesitation that it was wrong and forbidden by the Koran. I am sure many Catholics and members of other major religions would say the same thing too.

These were not extremists or radicals, they were educated, middle-class Muslim men. I am sure this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let´s face it, patriarchal religion was, and is, like a cancer on this planet. It oppresses women, children and men. We cannot let multi-cultural tolerance become tolerance of the totally unacceptable (and yes that includes women wearing hijab).

Can you imagine a white man gunning down fifty plus black people and people saying ‘don’t mention the fact that he’s white because that’s exploitative and we need to let people grieve’? No. In fact, whenever a white guy guns down people in the USA it is immediately made into an issue of race. So why are people saying that when a Muslim man guns down gay people? That is the problem with Regressive Left PC advocates (and I consider myself to be a socialist-anarchist). It’s imbalanced and selective in its outrage. It also gives people the impression (in its misplaced need not to offend Muslims or people of colour) that religious homophobia and intolerance by Muslims should not be openly discussed. As Dave Rubin eloquently put it in Orlando Terror Attack is a Wake Up Call to Gays, Women, and You:

Imagine if there was a political party that believed in forcing women to dress head to toe, endorsed throwing gays off roofs, and killing apostates who left the party. Every sane person, both left and right in America, would be rightfully against this backwards ideology. Yet for some reason, as a religion, this set of ideas gets a pass. And not only does it get a pass, it gets handled with kid gloves, tacitly endorsed or intentionally obfuscated by Western intellectuals. Of course, irony being what it is, Radical Islam will come for these apologists right after they’re done with the gays, the women, and the other assorted infidels.

Some people were also angry at the hypocrisy of the sudden outpouring and grief for the LGBT community while the daily crimes against LGBT people in Muslim-majority countries (sanctioned by the state and police) go ignored and unreported. Habiba Effat had this to say about hypocrisy on this issue from the Egyptian State Department:

Where the fuck are your “heartfelt” fucking “condolences” for the thousands of LGBTQ Egyptians who are arbitrarily arrested and forcibly disappeared and subjectto the most inhumane forms of torture and killed in cold blood in your police stations and prisons, whose stories will never be heard and whose causes cannot even be publicly advocated for because both state and society viciously sanction brutality against anything remotely queer in the name of traditions and morality and religion? Do you experience the same kind of “grief” for every gay or trans Egyptian whose life you have ruined and whose family you have torn apart? Are you “united” with the many more who cannot dare express themselves freely in this country for fear of never seeing the light of day again? Fuck you, Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you fucking joke of a diplomatic institution, and fuck you especially, Ahmed Abu Zeid, you hypocritical fucking cunt.